The thistle and the pen; an anthology of modern Scottish writers

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

Cornell University Library
PR 8644.L73

The thistle and the pen; an anthology of

3 1924 013 511 070

The original of tliis book is in
tine Cornell University Library.

There are no known copyright restrictions in
the United States on the use of the text.

http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 92401 351 1 070

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

THE
THISTLE AND THE PEN

An Anthology of Modem Scottish Waters
chosen and introduced

by
ERIC LINKLATER

THOMAS NELSON AND SONS LTD

LONDON EDINBURGH PARIS MELBOURNE

TORONTO AND NEW YORK

EL

THOMAS NELSON AND SONS LTD

Parksidc Works Edinburgh 9

3 Henrietta Street London WC2

312 Flinders Street Melbourne Cl

5 Parker's Buildings Burg Street Cape Town

Thomas Nelson and Soks (Canada i Ltd
91-93 WelJington Street West Toronto i

Thomas Nelson and Sons
385 Madison Avenue New York 17

Soa£T£ Franqaise D'EomoNS Nelson
as rue Henri Barbusse Paris V»

First published tgso

The prose text of this book is set in
i2-point Bembo

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

ix

Introduction

xi

JOHN ALLAN

The Family

3

GEORGE BLAKE

The Football Match

223

The Clyde

229

LILIAN BOWES LYON

Man

16

An Old Farm Labourer

188

Death in Summer

188

JAMES BRIDIE

Mr McCrimmon and the

Devil

17

IVOR BROWN

Good Words

136

KENNETH BUTHLAY

The Salmon

220

F FRASER DARLING

The Atlantic Seal

51

NORMAN DOUGLAS

The Werewolf

66

The Peasant

67

The Dragon

69

Mr Heywood

71

Miss Wilberforce and Mr Keith

73

Chocolate

78

Idiots

79

CONTENTS
ADAM DRINAN

The Men of the Rocks 294

BERNARD PERGUSSON

Across the Chindwin 237

JAMES PERGUSSON

Portrait of a Gentleman 3"

G S FRASER

The Black Cherub 82

SIR ALEXANDER GRAY

A Father of SociaUsm loi

Scotland 3i9

NEIL M GUNN

Up from the Sea 114

The Little Red Cow 122

GEORGE CAMPBELL HAY

Ardlamont 280

To a Loch Fyne Fisherman 280

The Smoky Smirr o Rain 281

MAURICE LINDSAY

The Man-in-the-Mune 148

Willie Wabster 148

Bum Music 149

ERIC LINKLATER

Rumbelow 132

Sealskin Trousers 261

HUGH MACDIARMID

Wheesht, Wheesht 64

Blind Man's Luck 64

Somersault 5^
vi

CONTENTS

Sabine 65

O Wha's been Here 197

Bonnie Broukit Baim 198

COLIN MACDONALD

Lord Leverhulme and the Men of Lewis 189

COMPTON MACKENZIE

The North Wind 199

MORAY MCLAREN

The Commercial Traveller 297

DONALD G MACRAE

The Pterodactyl and Powhatan's Daughter 309

BRUCE MARSHALL

A Day with Mr Migou 38

GEORGE MILLAR

Stone Walls . . . 170

NAOMI MITCHISON

Samund's Daughter 85

EDWIN MUIR

In Orkney 151

In Glasgow 158

In Prague 161

The Good Town 166

WILL OGILVIE

The Blades of Harden 259

ALEXANDER SCOTT

The Gowk in Lear 112

GEORGE SCOTT-MONCRIEFF

Lowland Portraits 282

vii

CONTENTS

SYDNEY GOODSIR SMITH

Hallowe'en 1943

34

Spleen

36

ANDREW YOUNG

The Paps of Jura

49

Hard Frost

49

The Fear

50

DOUGLAS YOUNG

Ice-flumes Owregie their Lades

99

Fermer's Deein

236

Last Lauch

236

vm

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks are due, and are hereby tendered, to the
following authors and publishers for permission to use
copyright poems and extracts from the volumes named
hereunder :

John Allan and Messrs Methuen & Co Ltd for Farmer's Boy ;
George Blake and William CoUins, Sons and Co Ltd for The Ship-
builders ; Jonathan Cape Ltd for three poems from Collected Poems
by Lilian Bowes Lyon ; James Bridie and Messrs Constable & Co
Ltd for Mr Bolfry (Plays for Plain People) ; Ivor Brown and Jonathan
Cape Ltd for Say the Word, Just Another Word, A Word in Your
Ear, I Give You my Word ; Kenneth Buthlay and The Ettrick Press
for ' The Salmon ' from Scottish Student Verse 1937-47 ; F Fraser
Darling and William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd for Natural History
in the Highlands and Islands ; Norman Douglas and Messrs Chatto
& Windus for Looking Back, Paneros and Together ; Norman Douglas
and Martin Seeker & Warburg Ltd for Old Calabria and South Wind ;
Adam Drinan for a passage from The Men of the Rocks, published
by The Fortune Press ; Bernard Fergusson and Blackwood's Magazine
for ' Across the Chindwin ' ; James Fergusson and Messrs OUver
& Boyd Ltd for Scotland igjS ; G S Fraser and The HarviU Press
Ltd for ' The Black Cherub ' from The Traveller has Regrets ; Sir
Alexander Gray and Messrs Longmans, Green & Co Ltd for The
Socialist Tradition ; Sir Alexander Gray for ' Scodand ' from Gossip,
published by The Porpoise Press ; Neil M Gunn and Messrs Faber
& Faber Ltd for Morning Tide and Young Art and Old Hector ; George
Campbell Hay and Messrs Ohver & Boyd Ltd for three poems from
Wind on Loch Fyne ; Maurice Lindsay and The Serif Books Ltd for
diree poems from At the Wood's Edge ; Eric Linklater and Jonathan
Cape Ltd for ' Rumbelow ' from A Dragon Laughed ; Eric Linklater
and Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd for Seabkin Trousers and Other Stories ;
Hugh MacDiarmid and William Blackwood & Sons Ltd for four
poems from Penny Wheep, ' O Wha's been Here ' from A Drunk Man

ix

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Looks at the Tkistk, and ' Bonnie Broukit Bairn ' from Sangschaw ;
Colin MacDonald and The Moray Press for Highland Journey ;
Compton Mackenzie and Messrs Chatto & Windus for The North
Wind of Love ; Moray McLaren and Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd
for Return to Scotland ; Donald G Macrae and William Maclellan
for ' The Pterodactyl and Powhatan's Daughter ' from Poetry Scot-
land No 3 ; Bruce Marshall and Messrs Constable & Co Ltd for
Yellow Tapers for Paris ; George Millar and WilHam Heinemann
Ltd for Horned Pigeon ; Naomi Mitchison and Jonathan Cape Ltd
for When the Bough Breaks ; Edwin Muir and George G Harrap
& Co Ltd for The Story and the Fable ; Edwin Muir and Messrs
Faber & Faber Ltd for ' The Good Town ' from The Labyrinth ;
Will Ogilvie for ' The Blades of Harden ' from Whaup o' the Rede ;
Alexander Scott for ' The Gowk in Lear ' from The Latest in Elegies ;
George Scott-Moncrieff and B T Batsford Ltd for Lowlands of Scot-
land ; Sydney Goodsir Smith and WiUiam Maclellan for two poems
from The Deevil's Waltz ; Andrew Young and Jonathan Cape Ltd
for ' Hard Frost ' from The Green Man and two poems from The
White Blackbird ; Douglas Young and William Maclellan for three
poems from A Braird o Thristles.

INTRODUCTION

This collection of prose and poetry by living Scottish
authors is designed neither as an omnibus nor as a dairy.
It does not offer a place to everyone, and it is not a de-
liberate skimming of the cream. In making the selection
I felt nb desire to be fair and inclusive ; and I have not
been dominated by a critical anxiety to show my chosen
authors at the tallest and most immaculate flowering of
their several talents. My purpose was rather to make an
attractive and, I hope, expository array of contemporary
writing, and mj method has been to rely on the arbitrary
taste of an indifferent memory. I began, that, is, with the
reflection on my mind of a landscape, sufficiently coloured
and showing the proper variety of scene to make a
Uterary portrait of Scotland, and then cast about in my
memory for passages in the work of the authors whose
prose and poetry had, in the ordinary course of my
reading, helped to create that landscape. I filled my
imagined map with what I thought would suit it.

Some very respectable features of the landscape have
been deUberately omitted. I decided to exclude books
and authors whose primary intention was informative or
critical, though the decision to do so deprived the anthol-
ogy of much that would have enhanced its value, and in
the few instances where I have broken this rule I have
done so for a specific but arbitrary reason. Fraser Darling,
for example, is a scientific and therefore informative
writer, but I have included his description of the Atlantic
Seal because seals are a relevant detail in the Scottish
landscape, and I have always regarded them with interest
and affection. A Father of Socialism, again, is critical and
instructive writing, but I remembered it for the sheer

xi

INTRODUCTION

pleasure it had given me ; it is Sir Alexander Gray's
unusual gift to write of political and economic matters
with such grace and wit as few authors command whose
only purpose is entertainment.

But though I have avoided instructional works, and
restricted my choice — or nearly so — to writers who are
primarily imaginative, my plan required that I should take
from their books what would illustrate the Scottish scene
and temperament ; or to be modest, my view of them.
There are rural pictures by John Allan and Edwin Muir
to set beside the urban scenes by Edwin Muir and George
Blake ; and there is a chapter from Compton Mackenzie's
immense novel. The Four Winds of Love, that I chose
dehberately in preference to many passages of a more
purely Uterary interest because it tells a good deal about
the ideas implicit in Scottish Nationalism and about the
sort of people one may hear discussing it. In Upjrom the
Sea there is something of Highland Scotland, unspoiled
by the vulgar world and Hghted by the translucent sky
of Neil Gunn's cosmography ; and in Stone Walls and
Across the Chindwin there are other provinces, very
turbulently full of the world, where Scots revive their
long history of war.

I have not, it will be observed, confined my choice of
scenery to native heath nor borrowed only from authors
who stiU pay taxes on their own soil. To have done that
would have been to show an imperfect and most mis-
leading view ; for the tale of Scotland is no more to be
told between Carter Bar and the Pentland Firth than the
history of Jewry between Dan and Beersheba. The true
parties to the Caledonian antisyzygy — Mr MacDiarmid's
impressive word — may be, indeed, not Highlanders and
Lowlanders, not Jacobitish romantics and hard-headed
Whigs, but forth-faring Scots and home-keeping Scots.
A remarkable sentiment for their own country dominates

xii

INTRODUCTION

the latter, a vigorous preference for far places appears to
inspire the former — but blood is thicker than the estrang-
ing seas, and on two noisy nights of the year in a hundred
towns from Auckland to Seattle there are many thousands
of otherwise orthodox and disciplined citizens who, in
a vast emotional confession, proclaim the breeding that
environment, often happily, occludes. I cannot think it
likely, I admit, that Norman Douglas makes a habit of
attending Burns Suppers, but even against a Mediter-
ranean background the ancestral bone shows clearly in
his countenance and work. Even the English climate, in
some ways a more subtle menace than Capri, does not
often quite obscure a Scottish origin, at least not for a
generation or two ; and if in his sentimental consciousness
a Scot may continue so in the pervasive airs of Hampstead
and Nottingham and Bournemouth, then the confmes of
Scotland are assuredly not Umited by geography.

The aggressive out-and-out Scottishness of the poets in
this anthology who, as the disciples of Hugh MacDiarmid,
write in the Lallans dialect, is a recent development in our
history ; for though there has been much physical combat
between Scots and English, Scottish writers have not,
until lately, shown hostility to the English language.
Such redoubtable figures, indeed, as John Kiiox and
David Hume assiduously cultivated its style and idiom,
and neither Smollett nor Sir Walter Scott, Carlyle nor
Stevenson, doubted their Hberty to use Enghsh as their
own. But some five and twenty years ago Hugh
MacDiarmid pubHshed a book of lyrical poems that
started a small revolution. It was patriotic as well as
Hterary. MacDiarmid, and those who accepted his lead,
were resolved to show their independence of the Enghsh
tongue as a preliminary to independence of English rule.
Of their politics I shall say nothing, but of their poetry
it is right to say that some of it is genuine poetry of no

xiii

INTRODUCTION

mean order, and the impuke to fashion a new language —
or find contemporary expression of a somewhat hypo-
thetical old language — is evidence of the modest Uveliness
that, for the last few years, has informed the Scottish
scene.

I do not want to exaggerate the several appearances of
a renewed vitality in Scodand that many observers,
sympathetic with the country, have lately spoken of;
for Scodand is a small country, and we who live in it are
naturally inclined to see the local view through the
magnifying glasses with which every parish council is
equipped. — ^That even the greatest powers encourage
their citizens to wear parochial glasses is of course equally
true, but no concern of mine. I cannot amend their
ways, and I may be optimistic in striving to discipline my
own. — ^But discoimt as you wUl the material evidence
of what has hopefully been called a Scottish Renaissance,
there remains throughout the land a strange confidence,
an assurance of its future that often sounds as cheerful
and irrational as the ringing shout of the anvil against the
hammer that belabours it. What justification there is for
confidence, except the spirit of confidence, I do not know
and I shall not pretend to ; but certainly it exists, and
between these present covers there is, for the time of day,
a remarkably good appetite for hfe, and a strangely small
flavouring of pessimism or disillusion.

This finally has to be said in explanation of the anthol-
ogy : I hope it will make money — not for myself, alas —
but for the Scottish Centre of the P.E.N. Club, whose
burden and honour in 1950 is to entertain in Edinburgh
the International Congress of the P.E.N. To this end
a great deal of money is required, and to raise a fraction
01 it the publishers of this book have offered me all
the resources of their historic organisation, while some
twenty writers, to whom I appealed because I was akeady

xiv

INTRODUCTION

indebted to them for much abiding pleasure, have given
mc permission to take what I wanted of their work.
Here is good will to start with, and good value, I think,
to second it. But good things in their best array come
three by three, and something is still needed to supplement
the givers and ripen their gifts.
What next ? Customers, please. . .

Eric Linklater

PncALzsAN House
Eastek Ross, January igio

XV

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

(768)

JOHN ALLAN

The Family

I WAS bom on the afternoon of the day on which my
grandfather signed his third trust-deed on behoof of
his creditors . . . the only form of literature in which
our family have ever achieved distinction. Though the
circumstances of my birth were not such as to cause him
any great pleasure, and though his own circumstances
were even more involved than usual, the Old Man abated
nothing of his usual intransigence in the face of fortune.
When the creditors and their agent had departed, the
midwife, an ancient and disillusioned female, presented
me to the Old Man. The two generations, I am told,
looked at each other in silence across the vastness of
seventy years, then the Old Man deHvered his grim
judgment :

' Gin it gets hair an' teeth it wtnna look sae like a rabbit.'

And so she left him.

' Aw weel,' said the Old Man, thinking over the events
of the day, ' we'd better jist mak a nicht o't.'

He thereupon invited a few old fpends, neighbouring
farmers long tied in the mischances of this world, to come
over that night for a game of nap. They came. They
hanselled the new child and the new trust-deed in the
remains of the greybeard, and the Old Man coUected
thirty shillings at nap before morning. Such was the
world into which I made my entry on a chill December
morning about thirty years ago.

Our family could boast of age if not of honour. We
could go back for five generations to one James who was
reputed to have been hanged for sheep-stealing about the
middle of the eighteenth century. All my researches have
failed to prove the authenticity of the legend, but I am

3

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

quite sure that if James existed he deserved hanging,
whether or not that was his fate.

It was in the first years of the nineteenth century that
my grandfather's grandfather came to Dungair. At that
time it was no more than a windy pasture between the
moss and the moor. By the terms of his lease he had to
bring so many acres under the plough within a term of
years and make certain extensions to the steading. Nothing
at all has survived of this ancestor beyond the fact that
his name was John, th^t he married a wife by whom he
had three sons and that he died in 1 83 1 in the sixty-second
year of his age.

Did I say nothing of his personality has survived ? I
was wrong, for he took in sixty acres from the moss and
the moor, manured and ploughed them and gathered
ever increasing harvests from them. He died in the
middle of October, and his last picture of this earth may
have been the stooks row on row in the Home Field,
twenty acres of grain where there had been only rashes
and heather before he came. The stooks were his
memorial, and every fifth year they stood there to his
honour, and so will stand as long as harvest comes to
Scotland.

John had three sons — ^Alexander, David and William.
David was a good youth, who grew up into a pious man.
He was a potter to trade, a great reader in a muddled sort
of way and a model to the community in all things.
Unfortunately he was left a widow man with one child
when he was forty. As there were no unattached female
relations available (our faimly has never bred daughters),
David had to engage a housekeeper. Bathia was a rum-
bustious creature of forty-five who completely altered
David's Hfe. She beHeved in the Church, was a con-
noisseur of funerals, but she could not be doing with
books. David's muddle-headed studiousness and respect-

4

JOHN ALLAN

ability appalled her. She set about changing all that. A
lot of nasty things were said about her, but I think she
had only the best intentions. Anyway, she certainly
jazzed up David a bit. First of all she gave little tea-parties.
Then porter- and ale-parties. Then they had a grand
wedding — at which only the fact that one of the police
was best man saved the whole crew from being run in.
David's second go of wedded bhss was not exactly one
long sweet song, because there were too many mornings
after, but he and his good lady certainly did add to the
gaiety of the village in which they lived. And David
enjoyed it. When anyone spoke of his first wife he
used to sigh, — but people were never quite sure that
he wasn't thinking of die years he had wasted on her
goodness.

William was altogether a simpler case. He was a
roisterer from birth. If there was any mischief to do, he
did it. If there was blame to be taken, he took it. If
there were girls to be kissed, he kissed them. He took
no thought for the morrow, but ate and drank and
flourished like a sunflower. He was tall, broad and
red-faced — a. masterful jolly man, fit to be a pubUcan.
And a pubhcan he became in a sort of way — ^at least he
also married a widow, and together they ran a discreet
httle ale-house in a discreet back lane. WiUiam was one
of his own good customers, and thereby achieved his
great distinction, which was half a nose.

It happened this way. WiUiam had been drinking all
morning with his friend Sandy the butcher, and when
Sandy announced that he was going back to the shop to
cut up a beast, William insisted on going with him.
After the usual amount of drunken argument, they
decided that WiUiam woidd hold the beast in position
while Sandy hacked it up with the cleaver. They got to
work. Unfortunately William's legs were not as steady

5

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

as they might have been, nor Sandy's aim as accurate.
No matter whose was the blame. Sandy fetched the
beast a mighty whack with the cleaver, but missed, and
shced off the point of WilUam's nose instead. . . . Sandy
was terribly sorry of course, but WUHam always made
Hght of the accident, though his wife used to say that he
never looked the same man again.

Alexander was a better man than his brothers. He had
the same physical appearance which persists in the family
even today — the hard round head covered with thick
black hair, the broad shoulders, the deep chest, the rather
short legs and the general aspect of an amiable bull. He
Uked good Uving, by which I mean dancing, drinking,
putting sods on the tops of neighbours' chimneys and
courting every pretty girl within ten nules. He was a
roistering young man who seemed destined for the Devil,
but he had one great passion which gave him a true
bearing among the devious ways of his pleasure. He
loved Dungair with a constancy and devotion that he
never showed towards any human being. He was
extravagant ; he was splendidly generous, and he was an
indifferent business man, with the result that he was always
poor, but no matter who should have to make sacrifices
it was never the farm. It would have been easy enough
for a husbandman of his skill to have cut down the supply
of guano for a year or two without doing any great
damage or showing the nakedness of the land. He would
far sooner have gone naked himself. Good husbandry
was his point of honour — a point cherished to idolatry.
It was his rehgion, perhaps the only rehgion he ever had.
It was his one ide^l and he never betrayed it. When he
came to die he too left his memorial in the sixty acres he
took in from the moss and moor, and in the richness
which he had added to John's rather grudging fields. He
left more than diat, for all his descendants inherited

6

JOHN ALLAN

something of his care for his beloved acres. John was
the pioneer, but Alexander was the great ancestor. He
died in 1878, aged sixty-nine.

I am loth to pass from Alexander, for he is the one
member of the family who has had anything of greatness
in him. It was not only in his devotion to Dungair that
he was great. He could go into any company of men as
equal. Remember that he was only a working farmer
— not even a bonnet laird — yet he was one of the best-
known figures in town. He took his Friday dinner in
the Red Lion at the same table as the provost and the
dean of guild. He carved his portion from the same
joint as men who could have bought and sold a thousand
of him, because they respected his craftsmanship in the art
of life as much as they enjoyed his broad salt wit which
never spared them. Of course life was simpler then.
Our town was more intimate, more domestic. A man
could find his proper place and be at ease in it. It was
the golden age of personaHty and bred a race of worthies,
but none was worthier than Dungair. Take him where
you like, he was a whole man. His descendants are only
weskits stuffed with straw.

Alexander had six children, four sons and two daughters.
There had been five others, but they died in childhood,
none of them surviving beyond eight months. They
would not have been unduly lamented, for stock-breeding
teaches a man to face Ufe and death with a certain reahsm.
Perhaps their mother wept for them a httle when she had
time. That's what women were for. Susan is a shadowy
figure about whom her children had very little to say.
She died when she was fifty, being then a little queer,
which is not altogether surprising.

Alexander's sons were John, Francis, Simon and George,
and his daughters were Jean and Margaret. George, die
baby, was a deUghtful person, a natural of the most

7

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

engaging kind. If he had been less happy he would have
been a poet. As it was, his Life was a blameless lyric. He
had no inhibitions, no morals and fortunately no great
appetites. His passion was animals. Cattle, horses, sheep,
pigs, goats and mongrel dogs were all alike his httle
brodiers. Like a wise elder brother he protected them,
and hke an elder brother he quite frequently thrashed
them. But there was no nuhce in the thrashings and
they seemed to have understood it. Certainly he never
meant to be cruel — a kinder and more benevolent httle
man never lived — and if he saw anyone maltreating an
animal he became almost homicidal. I never met him,
but I have heard so much about him from my grand-
mother, who loved him and loved to tell me about him,
that I feel as if I had known him all my Ufe. He seldom
left Dungair, for he was a httle shy of strangers, though
perfectly self-possessed if he had to meet them. He
preferred to sUy at home, where he was cattleman, singing
as he worked in the byre or fraising with the beasts with
whom he was on the most familiar terms. His only
incursion into society was his attendance at the dancing
class held every winter in the smiddy bam. He attended
that class for twenty-two years and never managed to
learn a step, which was very pectdiar, for he often used
to dance a minuet to his own whistling when things were
going by-ordinary well with him. I rather think he
went to the dancing class in order to show off his grey
bowler hat of which he was very proud, because he ceased
attending the class about the time when a family of mice
made their nest in it and he became so devoted to them
that he could not bear to turn them out. A lot of people,
including his brothers and sisters, thought George was
mad. Only his sister-in-law understood that he was
beautifully sane. He adored her and was always giving
her Uttle presents of flowers. Sometimes, when she had

8

JOHN ALLAN

been more than usually kind, his gratitude became
embarrassing, as on the day when he presented her with
an orphaned hedgehog of an extremely anti-social temper.
Of course George had no idea of taking care of himself.
One winter night when he was in bed with a cold he
became worried about a score of ewes folded up on the
moor. He rose at once and, with only a coat over his
nightgown, went up to them through the slashing rain.
That finished him. He took pneumonia and died in the
thirty-ninth year of his age. Everybody mourned for
him, especially his elder brother, for he had been a
wonderful catdeman and never asked for wages. His
sister-in-law mourned for him too, for there were no
more flowers, nor any grim unsocial hedgehogs.

Simon was another remarkable character. Like his
grandfather he was a pioneer, but in a very different way.
He took to learning. Not that he ever became a scholar,
but he had ambitions in that direction. He got the same
schooling as the others — the privilege of hearing old
Mother Kay damn the weather, the crows and himself
till he was twelve. Then he was taken home to work on
the farm. The good brown earth that the novelists write
about took him to herself for twelve hours a day, and
after twelve such hours a man had Httle taste for anything
but a chair by the ingle or a walk in the gloaming with a
young woman. Yet Simon had the strange impulse to
learning in him. Maybe he had the ambition to wag his
head in a pulpit ; maybe he wished to be a schoolmaster ;
maybe he just wished to know. Whatever it was, he
began to study the Latin when he was twenty, struggling
with the rudiments at the bothy fire while his companions
played the fiddle or told strong country stories. We
must feel very hiunble, we who get our learning handed
to us on a silver plate, when we think of Simon sitting
down to imravel the vagaries of the subjunctive after

9

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

twelve hours at the hoe. He could never have hoped for
any real reward. His must have been a pure love of
learning for itself, without any motives of preferment —
unless he was Hke an old shepherd I once knew who
collected terms like ' quantum sufficit,' ' e pluribus unum '
and ' reductio ad absurdum ' in order to swear the most
effectively at his dogs. Simon did not get very far with
Latin. At twenty-three he married a wife who taught
him that life was real and life was earnest when you had
to get meal, milk and potatoes for a family of nine. His
brother John helped him into a very small farm, where
he spent a laborious Ufe sweetened only by an occasional
taste of the wonders of science as revealed in odd comers
of the still very occasional newspaper. He was a kindly
simple man to whom the world was fuU of unknown but
dinuy apprehended mysteries, occluded by a voracious
and too self-evident family. He died in 1905, aged fifty,
leaving behind eight children who never did much to
justify themselves except produce children of the most
conventional urban type.

Great-uncle Francis was another family pioneer. He
discovered the trust-deed racket which my grandfather
was to carry to perfection. His father settled him in a
small farm, but did not give him enough capital to make
a success even remotely possible. Somehow he managed
to carry on for fifteen years until his affairs became so
embarrassed that he had to sign a trust-deed on behoof
of his creditors. He then found himself cleared of all
financial worries, a situation so strange that he died of it.
This is all there is to be said about Francis. It required
the superior wits of his brother John to see the trust-deed
as a perpetual haven of financial rest. Francis died in
1884, aged thirty-nine. His widow married a plumber
in Dundee and was never heard or thought of again.
He had six children, all of whom went to foreign parts.

10

JOHN ALLAN

Only one, as far as I know, achieved any distinction, he
having been bumped-ofF by an almost famous gangster
in a speakeasy in Chicago a few years ago.

My grandfather was the eldest son and inherited many
of Alexander's enduring qualities, such as his love for
Dungair, his contempt for business, his generosity, his
philoprogenitiveness and his short strong figure. When
I knew him he was an old man whose sins were coming
home to roost on his dauntless shoulders, but they tell
me he was a splendid man in his potestatur. When I
was a not-so-little boy we used to drive to church every
Sunday, the Old Man and I, in a pony and trap drawn
by an old white mare. The venerable old gentleman sat
high above me on the driving seat, with his antique square
hat — ^something between a bowler and a tile — and his
square white beard, a ripe old pagan casting a wise eye
over the fields he loved so well and the people he despised
so truly. The church-going was a rite which he always
honoured, though he held all rehgion in contempt, and I
am sure those Sunday-morning drives through the woods,
while the bell sounded so graciously across the shining
river, were the pleasantest hours of his Ufe. During the
sermon he would lean back in the ,pew, fold his hands
across his stomach and, fixing the evangelist in the south-
east window with a hard blue eye, would enjoy in
retrospect all the wickedness of his diverting life. When
the service was over we went out in the surJight again,
yoked the white mare into the trap and drove home
through the woods, while the jingle of the harness mingled
so melodiously with the cooing of the pigeons. Every
now and then the Old Man would mention some
worshipper who had been in church that morning and
add a biographical note of which I was too young to
understand anything except that it was scandalous. To
this day I have never understood why the Old Man went

II

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

to church, but he may have thought that his presence
would be a strong antiseptic against the parish becoming
too much infected with religion. On the other hand,
church may have been just another place to go to, and
he was a great goer-to-places.

He had been a famous figure at fairs and markets since
ever he became a man. Any fair or any market came
alike to him, but his favourite diversion was the Aulton
Market, held in the beginning of November on the glebe
of St Machar in Old Aberdeen. The fau was of very
great antiquity, and even when I was a child it was one
of the leading events of the social year. The war killed
it as it killed many other ancient institutions. The last
time I saw the Aulton Market there were no more than
a dozen horses on the field, and no gingerbread and no
whisky tents. How different thirty or forty years ago.
Maybe a thousand horses changed hands that day. The
whisky tents seethed with roaring drunken crowds.
Great pUes of gingerbread and chipped apples (a handful
a penny) melted off the stalls like snow wreaths in thaw ;
roistering farmers staked their shillings in hopeless attempts
to find the lady or spot the pea ; fiddlers played reels,
pipers piped laments, boxers took on all comers for a
guinea and baUad singers made the afternoon hideous
with the songs of Scotland. As the evening came on
gas flares lit up the lanes between the booths, making
the shadows yet more drunken as the wind troubled the
flames. The townspeople now came in for their evening's
fun — engineers from the shipyards, paper-makers up fi-om
the Don and hundreds of redoutable ladies from the
Broadford mill. Though the twin spires of St Machar
stood raised Uke pious hands in horror, and though the
tower of King's College maintained her aloof communion
with the stars, the saturnaha roared and swirled unheeding
on the glebe. And in the middle of it all, where the

12

JOHN ALLAN

pipers and the singers and the fiddlers were their noisiest,
you would find Dungair.

The Aulton Market was the scene of his greatest ploy
— certainly of the one which gained the greatest renown.
Strangest among the strange creatures attracted to the
market was a crazed evangelist known as the Pentecostal
Drimuner, so named by Dungair because he used to
beat a drum at street corners and call on the nations
to ffcpentance. Now it so happened that the Pentecostal
Drummer had marked down Diuigair as a brand specially
allotted for him to pluck from the burning. On this
particular market-day he took to following him round
and round the field, so that as soon as Dungair stopped
to have a dram or pass a joke the Pentecostal Drummer
pitched his stance at his side and called on him to repent,
banging the drum the while. Not only that, but he had
a board on which there was a lurid dratving of HeU, and
in red letters — ' Beware of the Wrath to Come.' No
matter where Dungair went he found the board stuck up
in his face. There is only a certain amount that a man
will stand even at the Aulton Market. Dungair grew so
annoyed with the Pentecostal Drummer that he suddenly
caught up the board and gave him the weight of the wrath
to come full on the top of his head. The Pentecostal
Drummer showed fight by aiming a kick at Dungair's
stomach, but the Old Man side-stepped, caught the drum
in his two hands and brought it down with such force on
the Drummer's head that it burst and jammed right over
his shoulders. He then gave the Drummer a smart crack
over the ankles with his staff, which so alarmed the poor
man, blinded as he was by the drum, that he let out a
hollow booming yell and set off with a bound, crashing
into people right and left, till he finally came to rest in
the rixins of a gingerbread stall. Dungair now felt that
he had done enough for honour's sake, and left the

13

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Drummer to square matters with the gingerbread woman,
after impounding his board as a souvenir. Some time
later in die night he made a tour of all his favourite
change-houses, bearing the board aloft, like a banner vdth
a strange device. And that was how he came to be knovim
for many years as ' The Wrath to Come.'

My grandfather was thirty when my great-grandfather
died. As he inherited the lease of Dungair and the
headship of the family, he found himself under the
obligation to take a wife. That can have presented no
difficulty, for he had already a notable reputation as an
empiricist. Within the year he chose the daughter of a
neighbourmg farmer, obtained favour with her parents
and married her. There is no record that she loved him.
There was even a legend that she had a romantic passion
for a landless youth from the next parish. And yet I am
not so sure, for I once heard her confess, half a century
later, that he was a braw man in his big black whisker.
It was considered a good match, because if a girl got every-
thing else she should not expect fideUty. The strange
thing is that however much she had to go without in
the hard years to come she always did get fideUty. It is
no business of ours what passion there was between them,
nor was I ever privy to their tenderness, for embraces are
unseemly on old shoulders and they had an inviolate
native dignity. She respected even his faults, and he
respected the greatness that could respect them. Perhaps
there were storms when they were younger, but they
were lovely in their age. There was peace in their house
when their children left them, and the love with which
they cared for me must have sprung from some splendid
faith. in life, for they were old and could never hope for
any reward, nor, as far as I know, did they ever get it.

A few years ago I met an ancient gentleman who used
to be our neighbour. He was one of the oldest men I

M

JOHN ALLAN

have ever seen, a tiny old man, dried and blanched, like

a wand of grass, so that if the north wind had passed

over him surely he would have been no more. It was a

summer day when I went to see him. He was sitting at

the window of a blue sunny room, looking over a small

garden full of violas and yellow tea-roses, and warming

in the great sun the tiny silver flame of Ufe that stiU

burned in his ancient body. He knew me as soon as he

saw me. I might have been the young Dungair of seventy

years ago, he said. Then we fell talking of those distant

years when he had ridden a horse and danced at weddings.

He mentioned my grandmother. ' What was she like as a

young woman ? ' I asked him. ' The handsomest farmer's

wife that ever came to town on market-day,' he said, and

I'll swear that the Hfe burned stronger far down in his

sunken eyes. ' The handsomest wife that ever drove tae

market,' he said. We had buried her two months before

on a stormy afternoon. We expected few people at the

funeral, for we had left Dimgair, and the family were

scattered beyond the seas, therefore it was a surprise to

find how many old men had turned out that day. I

thought at the time that they were paying their respects

to Dungair and to the family which, the old woman

gone, must now be lost forever in the great world. I

was grateful to the old men in the antique coats, and

strangely proud that I had been part of Dungair. But

now that I saw that tiny gleam in the old man's eye, I

began to wonder if it were not the pride and beauty of

the young wife that had called the old men to her grave

after fifty years.

Farmer's Boy

15

LILIAN BOWES LYON

Man

Once you were molten geology, heave and collapse
Of a monster genesis ; once, in the oozy groves
Begotten of ocean, you coined accusative shapes
Who cracked the dusk like an apple in gHstening halves.
Once you were shepherds and loved your deUberate Uves,
Looked down for advice into wells with limestone lips.

You imposed your will upon clay, cut angry laws
In the simpleton rock, soon yoked the ox-eyed rivers
To turn the mills of your massacred-innocent wars ;
Your cruelties towered as high as the kestrel hovers ;
And yesterday. Earth may sigh, you were pristine lovers.
Whose candour pleased the corrigible stars.

New Earth may sigh for you pressed to the breast of

Mammon,
For tyrants crowned, the gold and the senile head.
For souls against tingling falls like the spring-bent salmon
Who leap and are hurled back vomiting rainbow blood ;
Your luckier seed shall expound the bewildering dead
Who were enemies locked with a luminous goal in common.

Then bum like stubble ; crash ; tuberculous towns.

You, grim with child, the brood your child may bear,

Daughters of Hesperus, Himalayan sons.

Shall comprehend man's age of brief despair :

Who once adored a moss-green world, aware

Of the slumbering doe and her mild original fawns.

Collected Poems

16

JAMES BRIDIE

Mr McCrimmon and the Devil

Cully : I see. Yes. That's very interesting. But, you
see, Mr Bolfry, we have got a little away from the
conceptions of good and evU that were prevalent in
. . . well, in your time. We have rather a different
orientation, if you see what I mean.

Bolfry : I see exactly what you mean. Your generation
is not what you call orientated at all. Your scientific
gentlemen have robbed you of time and space, and
you are all Httle bUnd semi-conscious creatures tossing
about in a tempest of skim milk. If I may be allowed
to say so, it all comes of thinking yourselves a little too
good for your priests. You went prancing away from
your churches and schoolrooms. And the first thing
you did with your emancipated state was to hand
yourselves over body and soul to a number of plain-
clothes priests whose only qualification was that they
were good at sums. That was very foohsh of you.
\to Morag] Wasn't it, my dear ?

MORAG : Yes, sir.

Bolfry : You can't organise and expound the sentient
universe simply by being good at sums, can you ?

Morag : No, sir.

Bolfry : Just as I thought. And then you found that
even sums were a bit too difficult. If you can't do a
quadratic equation, all these pages of incomprehensible
figures are too much of a strain on simple faith. You
went to a new sort of old gentleman who said to you,
' Life, my dear brethren, is one long smutty story.'
' Aha ! ' you said, ' this is a bit of all right. Why
wasn't I told this before ? ' But no amount of licentious
conversation with serious-looking professors could cure

{7M) 17

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

the ache and restlessness in your souls. Could it, my

darling ?
MoRAG : Whatever you say yourself, sir.

[He helps himself to another drink]
BoLFRY : That's an admirable whisky you keep, Mrs

McCrimmon.
Mrs McCrimmon : We only keep it as a medicine.

Mr McCrimmon is a teetotaller.
BoLFRY : Everything is a medicine, Mrs McCrimmon.

Everybody in this world is sick. Why is everybody

in this world sick ? A most profitable line of inquiry.

Why are we all sick, Morag ?
MoRAG : I think it is because we're all a bit feared of

you, Mr Bolfry.
BoLFRY : Feared of me ? Feared of me ? Dear, dear.

Come, come. You're not afraid of me, are you,

McCrimmon.
McCmmmon : Get thee behind me, Satan !
BoLFRY : What did you say ?
McCrimmon : Avoid thee. Get thee behind me,

Satan !
Bolfry : Perhaps I should not have allowed you to get

within that comfortable ring of chalk. You must not

speak to me like that.
McCmivimon [throwing over his chair as he stands up] :

This is nonsensical. It is an evil dream. Presently I

will be waking up. What do they call you, sir, you

masquerading fiend ?
Bolfry : I have told you, sir. My name is Bolfry. In

the days of sanity and beHef it was a name not unknown

to men of your cloth.
McCrimmon : You are dressed like a minister. Where

is your kirk ?
Bolfry : In Hell.

McCrimmon : Are there kirks in Hell ?

i8

JAMES BRIDIE

BoLFRY : Why not ? Would you deny us the consola-
tions of religion ?

McCrimmon : What I would deny you or grant you is
nothing to the point. You are a liar and the father of
lies. There cannot be a kirk in Hell.

BoLFRY [twisting suddenly round to look at the portrait of a
clergyman hanging on the wall] : Who is that ?

McCrimmon : That is the worthy Doctor Scanderlands
of Fetterclash.

BoLFRY : How do you know ?

McCrimmon : It is an engraving of a portrait taken from
the Ufe.

BoLFRY : The portrait was bitten into a plate with acid
and printed in ink on paper. The black ink and the
white paper were arranged according as the light and
shadow fell on the Doctor's face and bands and gown ;
so that the Doctor's friends cried in delight, ' It is the
very lineaments of the Doctor himself that we behold ! '
Would you recognise it as the Doctor if it were all
black ink or white paper ?

McCrimmon : If you came here, sir, at the back-end of
midnight to give us a lecture on the Art of Engravmg,
I can only observe

BoLFRY : Keep your herrings for the Loch, and do not
drag them across my path. Without this black and
that white there would be no form of Doctor Scander-
lands that we could see ?

McCrimmon : Maybe you are right.

BoLFRY : The artist could tell us nothing about the
Doctor v^nthout them ?

McCrimmon : He cotdd not.

BoLFRY : And neither you nor I nor anyone else can tell
anything about Heaven or Hell, or this very imperfect
makeshift of an Earth on which we stand, without our
blacks and our whites and our greys, which are whites

19

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

mixed with black. To put it in simple words, we
cannot conceive the Universe except as a pattern of
reciprocatmg opposites, [to Morag] can we, my love ?
No, of course we can't. Therefore when I tell you
that diere are kirks in Hell, I am telling you something
that is at least credible. And I give you my word of
honour as a gentleman that it is true.

McCrimmon : What do you preach in your kirks ?

BoLFRY : Lend me your pulpit and I will show you a
specimen.

Jean : Oh, Uncle Jock, do ! You may never get such a
chance again.

McCrimmon : Sleeping or walking, dream or no dream,
I'D have no blasphemy in this parish.

BOLFRY : Blasphemy ? I should never think of com-
mitting blasphemy. I think I may say that I know my
position better. I am a Duke and a General of Legions.
Only gutter devils are impertinent to the Deity. . . .
But won't you sit down ?

McCrimmon [sitting] : I can make nothing of this.

BoLFRY : You disappoint me. You are a Master of Arts.
You are a Bachelor of Divinity. You are a theologian
and a "metaphysician and a scholar of Greek and
Hebrew. What is your difficulty ? Don't you beUeve
in the Devil ?

McCrimmon : He goeth about like a roaring lion.

BoLFRY : Not when I am sober. Answer my question.

McCrimmon : I believe in a personal devil.

BoLFRY : And in good and evil ?

McCrimmon : Yes.

BoLFRY : And in Heaven and Hell ?

McCrimmon : Yes.

BoLFRY : And body and soul ?

McCrimmon : Yes.

BoLFRY : And hfe and death ?

20

JAMES BRIDIB

McCrimmon : Yes.

BoLFRY : Do you believe in the truth and inspiration of
the Bible ?

McCrimmon : Yes.

BoLFRY : Have you read the Book of Job ?

McCrimmon : Yes.

BoLFRY : ' Now there was a day when the sons of God
came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan
came among them.'

McCrimmon : The Devil can quote Scripture for his
own purpose.

BoLFHY : An entirely suitable purpose in this case. . . .
Mr McCrimmon, I believe also in the things of which
1 have spoken.

McCrimmon : And tremble.

BoLFRY : Not infrequently. But the point is this : Why,
if we hold all these beliefs in common, do you find
anything odd in my conversation or my appearance ?

McCrimmon : I don't know.

BoLFRY : Tuts, tuts, man. PuU yourself together. If
the Creator Himself could sit down peacefully and
amicably and discuss experimental psychology with
the adversary, surely you can follow His example ?

McCrimmon : Mr Bolfry, or whatever you call yourself,
it is plain to me that you could talk the handle off a
pump. If you have a message for me, I hope I have
enough Highland courtesy to listen to it patiently, but
I must ask you to be brief.

Bolfry : Mr McCrimmon, I am not charged with any
message for you. Indeed, I think it will turn out that
you and I are in agreement on most essential points.
But these young people have summoned me on a cold
and dismal night from my extremely warm and
comfortable quarters. If you had instructed them
properly all this wouldn't have been necessary. But

21

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

we'll let that pass. Do you mind if we go on from the
point at which you rather rudely ordered me to get
behind you ?

McCrimmon : Go on from any point you like. You
are whirling about like a Tee-to-tum.

BoLPRY : Highland courtesy, Mr Cully.

McCrimmon : And keep your tongue off the Highlands.

BoLFRY : Mr McCrimmon, I may be only a Devil,
but I am not accustomed to be addressed in that
fashion.

Jean : Mr Bolfry

BoLFRY : One moment, please [to McCrimmon]. Unless,
sir, you are prepared to exercise a httle dviHty I must
decline to continue this discussion.

McCrimmon : The discussion, sir, is none of my seeking
— ^no more than is yom: intrusion into my house and
family circle. So far as I am concerned, you are com-
pletely at hberty to continue or to sneck up.

Mrs McCrimmon : Oh, John ! That's an awful like way
to speak to a guest.

McCrimmon : He is no guest of mine.

Bolfry : That is true. I am Mr Cully's guest. Why
did you send for me, Mr Cully ?

Cully : I'm blessed if I know, now you come to ask.

Bolfry : The likeliest reason was that you were unhappy
and afraid. These are common complaints in these
days. Were you crying for me from the dark ?

Jean : No. We weren't. My uncle thinks he has got
divine authority. And he was using his confidence in
that and his learning and his eloquence and his person-
ahty to bully us. We wanted a httle authority on our
side.

Bolfry : I see. Thank you very much.

Jean : He's got the advantage of beheving everything
he says.

22

JAMES BRIDIB

BoLFHY : A great advantage.

Jean : You can't meet a man like that on his own ground
if you think he's talking nonsense.

BoLFRY : You can't discuss what brand of green cheese
the moon is made of unless you accept the possibility
that the moon is made of green cheese. I see. In what
do you beUeve, Miss Jean ?

Jean : I believe that the ICingdom of Heaven is within
me.

BoLFRY : Is that all ?

Jean : That's practically all.

BoLFHY : So far as it goes, you are quite right. But you
are also the receptacle of the Kingdom of Hell and of a
number of other irrelevances left over in the process of
evolution. Until you can reconcile those remarkable
elements with one another you will remain unhappy
and have the impulse, from time to time, to raise die
devil.

Jean : Then we ought to study these what-do-you-call-
'ems — these elements, and try to reconcile them ?

BoLFRY : I didn't say you ought to. I said you won't be
happy till you do.

Jean : Then we ought to, oughtn't we ?

BoLFRY : If you want equilibrium. If you want happi-
ness.

Cully : But surely the pursuit of happiness

BoLFRY : Yes, yes. The pursuit. A very different thing
from catching your electric hare. The happiest man is
a general paralytic in Bedlam. Yet you do not envy
him. He is in a state of death in life. You naturally
prefer hfe in death — probably because you are used
to it. . . . You are not favouring me with much of
your attention, Mr Cohen.

Cohen : Sorry, sir.

BoLFRY : Why not ?

23

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Cohen : Well, sir, if you want to know the honest truth,
I'm bored bloody stiff.

BoLFRY : You say that with an air of some superiority.
You must not be proud of being bored stiff. Boredom
is a sign of satisfied ignorance, blunted apprehension,
crass sympathies, dull understanding, feeble powers of
attention and irreclaimable weakness of character. You
belie your Uvely Semitic countenance, Mr Cohen. If
you are aUve, Mr Cohen, you should be interested in
everything — even in the phenomenon of a devil
incarnate explaining to you the grand Purpose in
virtue of which you live, move and have your breakfast.

Cohen : It's all hooey, that. There's no such thing as a
purpose. It's a tele — teleo — teleological fallacy. That's
what it is.

BoLFRY : Dear me ! Dear me ! Mr McCrimmon, you
are an amateur of blasphemy. What do you say to
that?

McCrimmon : The man is wrong.

BoLFRY : Another point on which we are agreed.

Cohen : I can't help it. I'm entitled to my opinion.

McCrimmon : In what sort of a world have you been
living, man ?

Cohen : In the Borough Road. Do you know it ?

McCrimmon : Even in the Borough Road, do you find
no evidence of eternal purpose ?

Cohen : Not a bit.

BoLFRY : My dear goodness gracious me, I know the
place very well, and it's simply bursting with eternal
purpose.

McCrimmon : There's not one brick laid on another,
there's not one foot moving past another on the dirty
pavement that doesn't tap out ' purpose, purpose,
purpose ' to anybody with the ears to hear.

BoLFRY : Every one of your higher faculties is bent to

24

JAMES BRIDIE

some purpose or other. You can't make anything
happen without a purpose. There are things happening
all round you on the Borough Road. How in the
world do you think they happen without a purpose
behind them ?

McCrimmon : Do you deny to your Maker the only
respectable faculty you've got ?

Cohen : All I can say is, if I've got a Maker and He's got
a purpose I can't congratulate Him on the way it works
out.

BoLFBY and ] But my dear good chap, you can't possibly
sit there and

McCrimmon

[talking

together]

How can you have the presumption to sit
there and

BOLFRY : I beg your pardon.

McCrimmon : No, no. Excuse me. Please go on.

BoLFRY : Not at all. After you.

McCrimmon : It is not for you to congratulate or not

to congratulate. Who is able to judge the Creator of

Heaven and Earth ?
Cully : "Well, who is ?
Cohen : Yes, who is ? Mind, I don't admit there's any

such person. But if there is and he give us a critical

faculty, we got to use it, see ?
Jean : Conk's absolutely right. You tell us to praise

Him. What's the good of praise when you've no

chance of blaming ? It doesn't mean a thing.
Cully : What happens to your reciprocating opposites,

Mr Bolfry, if we can't be anything but a lot of sanctified

Yes Men ?
Cohen : Hallelujah all the time. Not much encourage-
ment to the Creator to stick to His job.
Jean : That's the stuff to give them, Conk ! And I

thought you were too much the gentleman to open

your head.

25

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Cohen : No offence meant, of course.

McCrimmon : Young man, do you realise that your

foolish words are jeopardising your immortal souls ?
Cohen : That's all tinky-tonk with me. We ain't got

any immortal souls.
BoLFRY : I begin to beheve it. Mr McCrimmon, it

seems to me we cannot begin our battle for the souls

of these persons until they reaHse that they have souls

to battle for.
McCrimmon : It is terrible indeed. Our duty is plain.

We must wrestle with them. We must admonish and

exhort them.
BoLFRY : It is my duty no less than yoiurs.
McCrimmon : But stop you a minute. I know that this

is only a dream, but there must be logic, even in dreams.

I understand you to say that you are a devU.
BoLFRY : But I am also, like yourself, a servant of One

whom I need not name.
McCrimmon : I am a very distressed man. You must

not quibble with me nor use words with double

meanings.
BoLFRY : I am bound by my contract with our young

exorcist here to tell nothing but the plain truth. My

distinguished relative is in the same position as I. I am

the same Instrument of Providence as he who smote

Job's body with boils for the good of his soul.
McCrimmon : That is a way of looking at it. Certainly

it is a way of looking at it, whatever.
BoLFRY : More than that, if it is of any interest to you, I

am an ordained Minister of the Gospel.
McCrimmon : Do you tell me that ? Where were you

ordained.
BoLFRY : In Geneva in 1570.
McCrimmon : What did you say ?
BoLFRY : In Geneva, I said.

26

JAMES BRIDIB

McCrimmon : But in what year ?

BoLFKY : The year is immaterial. I can't swear to it

within two or three years. But ordained I am. And I

have preached, among other places, in the High Kirk at

North Berwick, to the no small edification of the heges.
McCeimmon : Will you swear to that ?
BOLFRY : Mr McCrimmon, my Yea is Yea and my Nay

is Nay.
McCrimmon : It is a most remarkable thing, but from

what I have heard from your hps so far, your doctrine

appears to be sound.
BoLFRY : None sounder. And now that you are satisfied,

I have a proposal to make.
McCrimmon : What is your proposal ?
BoLFRY : I propose that we adjourn to the adjoining

sacred edifice and there admonish and exhort our

brothers and sister in a place suitable for these exercises.
McCrimmon : You mean my kirk ?
BoLFRY : Where else ? Is it not the place most suitable

for a conversation ?
McCrimmon : It is suitable. But all this is very strange.
BoLFRY : All life is very strange. Shall we go ?
McCrimmon : I cannot enter the kirk in my nightshirt ;

though it is true that I have dreamed that same more

times than once.
BoLFRY : Go upstairs then and change. I shall wait for

you.
McCrimmon : Well, well. Come with me, Marget. . . .

And in case I wake up before I come down again,

Mr Bolfry, let me assure you that it has been, upon the

whole, a pleasure to meet you. I hope I have not

passed the stage of learning . . . even from a — a. Being

of your — your Nature.
Bolfry : Sir, you are most poUte. I hope to be able to

reciprocate the comphment.

27

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

[Exeunt Mr and Mrs McCrimmon, Bolfry holding
the door open for them]

Jean : I never heard the like of that !

Bolfry [mildly] : Of what, my dear ?

Jean : You're on his side !

Bolfry : What did you expect ?

Jean : I don't know. I certainly didn't expect such a
pious Devil !

Bolfry : My dear young lady, you don't know every-
thing, as you are very shortly to find out.

Jean : If you want to know my opinion, I think you're
drunk.

Bolfry : Drunk ? Dear me ! Tut tut, tut tut !

[He helps himself]

Cully : Well, I don't know what you chaps feel, but
I'd feel the better of a drink myself.

MoRAG : No !

Cully : What do you mean by No ?

MoRAG : Don't leave the circle. He'll get you if you
leave the circle.

Bolfry : She's quite right. Quite right. Quite right.
You are a percipient little slut, my darling.

Jean : But ... I mean, it's all nonsense . . . but what
happens on the way to church ?

Bolfry : Nothing. Nothing. The Holy Man will pro-
tect you. They have their uses. Holy Men. Not that
I am really dangerous. But we are mischievous a Uttle,
and fond of experiments. Eve and the apple was the
first great step in experimental science. But sit down.
Mister Gunner Cully. There is plenty of time. Let us
continue our delightful conversation. Let me see.
Where were we ?

Jean : Does it matter very much ? You're the most
inconsequent character I ever met.

Bolfry : Oh, no, no. I follow the pattern. If there is

28

JAMBS BRIDIE

one. Perhaps that's what's wrong with you young
people. You don't seem to have any pattern. The
woof, as it were, is flying loosely about in space.
There is no drama about your associations. Now, I
am very fond of the Drama. I have done a little bit in
that way myself To my mind the really interesting
Ufe is that which moves from situation to situation,
with character developing naturally in step with that
orderly progress. Now what is the matter with the
four of you is that you haven't a situation among
you. You are a quartette that has forgotten its
music. We must do something about it. Let me see,
Mr Cully.

Cully: Well?

BoLFRY : Here we have a common soldier who

Cully : I'm not a common soldier. I'm in the Royal
Artillery.

BOLFEY : Here we have a young intellectual

Cully : There's no need to use foul language. Call me
what you like, but not that.

BOLFSY : Very well, then. Here we have a product of
our universities and public schools. I know I am
correct there.

Cully : How do you know ?

BoLFRY : Because you can't Usten patiently and because
you have no manners. Here we have this delicately
nurtured youth cheerfully bearing the rigours of the
barrack and the bivouac. Why ? Has he a secret
sorrow ?

Cully : No, I haven't. And I'm bearing the rigours
because I've blooming well got to. I was stuck for a
commission on my eyesight, but I'll be in the Pay Corps
within a month with any luck. And then goodbye
rigours of the barrack and bivouac.

BoLFRY : None the less, an interesting character. A

29

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

philosopher. An observer of Life. Obviously the
juvenile lead for want of a better.

Cully : Thank you.

BoLFKY : Don't mention it. There is about him a certain
air of mystery which we shall presently resolve. The
leading woman, on the other hand, is cast along more
stereotyped Unes. She is what happens in the third
generation after one of the many thousand movements
for the emancipation of women. So is Mr Cully, by
the way.

Jean : What in the world do you mean by that ?

BoLFRY : You are only faintly feminine and he only
slightly masculine. All these women's movements
tend to have a neutraUsing effect on the human race.
Never mind. It will make our little drama interesting
to the psychologist, and we are all psychologists nowa-
days. We come now to what used to be called comic
relief.

Cohen : That wouldn't be me, I don't suppose ?

BoLFRY : Yes. There is nothing dramatic about the poor
unless they are very funny or very tragic.

Cohen : Wotjer mean by the poor ? I ain't never had a
bob I haven't worked for.

BoLFRY : That is what 1 mean by the poor. As for the
extremely charming little person on my right, I haven't
decided whether she is funny or not. As she is an
unsophisticated savage, she is probably significant of
something which will no doubt emerge.

Cully : What about the minister ?

BoLFRY : He wiU provide personality. The drama wUl
revolve about him and ... ah, yes ... his lady wife.
As I had nearly forgotten all about her, she is probably
the key to the whole business. There, my dear friends,
are the Dramatis Personae. We have now

Cohen : Where do you come in ?

30

JAMES BRIDIE

BoLFRY : I am the Devil from the Machine. Here we
have our persons in the play. We knovsr very little
about them, because, so far, there is nothing much to
know. We caimot imitate the old dramatists and
describe them as Cully in love with Jean, Conk in love
with Morag, Jean in love with Cully, Morag

MoKAG : Now, I am not, Mr Bolfry, no indeed at all.
And you needn't be saying it.

Jean : Nobody's in love with anybody else. Not here,
anyhow. Why should they be ?

Bolfry : The animals went in two by two for a very
particular reason. And when a drama has no other
especial interest it would be unkind to deny it a love
interest. I think the least you can do is to fall in love
as quickly as possible. You are wasting time.

Jean : Except Conk and Morag.

Morag : Now, Miss Jean ! . . .

Cohen : We told you before we was only talking about
budgerigars.

Bolfry : Budgerigars ! Love birds ! Brilliant images
of tenderness and desire with every delicate feather-
frond aHve with passion ! We taught them speech
that they inight teach us their mystery. And what did
they say : ' Cocky's clever. Cocky's clever. Chirrup,
chirrup. Good morning, good evening.' That's all.
And yet how much better do you express the primeval
urgencies within you ? ' Cully's clever. Jean's clever.
Chirrup. Good evening.' I must teach you how to
express yourselves better, yoimg enemies of Death.
Come then. Why don't you tell Miss Jean what you
think of her. Cully ? She would be extremely flattered.

Jean : No, I wouldn't. He told me already what he
thinks of me, and I've slapped his face. You're a silly
old ass. If you've come here to talk about repressions
and inhibited personahties I wish you'd stayed in Hell.

31

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

You know perfectly well that if it weren't for inhibitions

every living thing on this earth would run down in a

few minutes.
BoLFRY : Ofcourse it would And how shockingly you

misunderstand me. I love repression. You repress your

passion to intensify it ; to have it more abundantly ;

to joy m its abundance. The prisoner cannot leap to

lose his chains unless he has been chained.
Jean : Then what are you talking about ?
BoLFRY : About you. Come. I'll marry you.
Jean : But I don't want to marry you.
BoLFRY : No, no. I mean, I'll marry Cully and you.

I'll bind you by the strongest and most solemn contract

ever forged in heaven. Think of the agonising fun and

excitement you'll have in breaking it.
Jean : No. Thank you very much.
BoLFRY : But why don't you do something ? Why is

the blood galloping through your not unsightly Umbs ?

Why are the nerve cells snapping and flashing in your

head if you are to wrap this gift of life in a napkin and

bury it in a back garden ?
Jean : We are doing something.
BoLFHY : Indeed ?
Jean : We're fighting Hitler.
BoLFRY : And who is Hitler ?
Cohen : Blind me, I'd 've thought if anybody knew the

old basket it 'd be you.
Cully : Do you mean to tell me that we've all gone to

the trouble of fetching a damned medieval hypothesis

out of Hell to tell us what hfe is ail about, and now we

have to tell him ?
Jean : Mr Bolfry, dearest, Hitler is the man who started

the War.
BoLFBY : Is he ? I diought I had done that. How is the

War getting on ? ... No. Don't tell me. I'll try to
32

JAMES BRIDIE

guess. fBoLFHY helps himself to another drink] I should
think some lunatic has been able to persuade his country
that it is possible to regiment mankind. I should think
the people he has persuaded are my old friends the
Germans. They are sufficiently orderly and sufficiently
stupid so to be persuaded. I should conjecture that
mankind has risen in an intense state of indignation at
the bare possibility of being regimented. I should think
that the regimenters will succeed in hammering their
enemies into some sort of cohesion. Mankind will then
roll them in mud for a bit and then pull them out and
forget all about them. They will have much more
interesting things to attend to — such as making money
and making love. . . .

Plays for Plain People (Mr Bolfry)

(»M) 33

SYDNEY GOODSIR SMITH

Hallowe'en 1943

Rm and rout, rin and rout,
Mahoun gars us birl about,
He skirls his pipes, he stamps his heel.
The globe spins wud in a haliket reel.

There, the statesman's silken cheats.
Here, the baimless mither greits ;
There, a tyrant turns the screw.
Here, twa luvers' broken vous.

Enemies out, enemies in.
Truth a hure wi the pox gane blind,
Nou luvers' Ups deny luve's name
And get for breid a chuckie-stane.

We kenna hert, we kenna held.
The deevil's thirled baith quick and deid,
Jehovah snores and Christ himsel
Lowps in the airms o Jezebel.

The sweit that rins firae his thomit brou
Is black as the standan teats o his cou.
In the waltz o tears, and daith and hes
Juliet's fyled wi harlotries.

Ay, luve itsel at Homie's lauch
Skeers like a candle in the draucht.
The dance is on, the waltz o hell.
The wind firae its fleean skirts is snell.

gar, cause to birl, spin wud, mad halika, giddy, wild grell, weep
thirled, enslaved, enthralled Skeers, shies siiell, bitterly cold

34

SYDNEY GOODSIB SMITH

It whips black storm frae lochan's calm,
Sets banshees in the house o dwaum,
Gars black bluid spate the hert o me
— And waters guid sirs' barley bree !

A wheen damned feckless fanatics
Wad halt the borneheid dance o Styx,
Their cry o truth the whirlwind reaps —
For pity's drunk and mercy sleeps.

Orpheus alane dow sauve frae deid
His ravished Bride gin but she'd heed —
Ay, truth and luve like Albyn's life
Hing wi a threid, kissed by a knife.

Nichtlie, owre some huddered toun
The pipes and fiddles screich and boom —
The chaudron's steered by Maestro Nick
Wi a sanct's hoch-bane for parritch-stick.

He lauchs his lauch, the angels greit
Wi joy as they dine on carrion meat ;
Ablow, bumbazed dumfounered cods.
We seek the sternes in dubs and bogs.

Our ingyne's deaved, our mous are shut.
Our saul contract like a runkled nut,
Een carma see the trees for the wuid
And hert's gane dreich for want o bluid.

For want o luve we live on hate,
For want o hevin praise the State,
For want o richts we worship rules.
For want o gods the glibbest fules.

dwaum, dream barley bree, whisky wheen, few borneheid, headlong

dow, can huddered, huddled hoch-bane, thigh-bone bumbazed, bewildered

cods, fellows stemes, stars dubs, gutters ingyne, mind, intelligence

deaved, deafened

35

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Obey, obey ! Ye maunna spier !
(Libertie's forjeskit lear !)
While Cloutie pipes it's crime to think,
—It's taxed e'en hiecher nor the drink !

O rin and rout, we birl about
Til the rhythm o the Deil's jack-boot,
Black as auld widdie-fruit, Mahoun
Bestrides a kenless mapamoimd.

The DeeviFs Waltz

spier, inquiie, aik forjeskit, broken dovra, jaded lear, custom, knowledge
tviidie, gallows

Spleen

Sthr bogle, squat bogle.

Bogle o sweimess and stuporie ;

Wersh bogle, wae bogle,

Bogle o drumlie apathie ;

Thae twa baud this fule in duress —

Malancolie, Idleness.

In duress vile, ye muckle fule.

Cock o your midden o sloth and stour.

Geek o the yill and a restless saul

I dwaum like a convict, dowf and dour

As the runt o a riven aik

Whar ghouls can sit or their hurdies ache.

Steir, fat sweimess, tediousness, laziness wersh, insipid stour, dust
Geek, fool, victim of trick ytll, ale dowf, listless, torpid ati^ oak
hurdies, backside

36

SYDNEY GOODSIR SMITH

The westlins sun, reid owre The Gowf,

Fluids aa the Links wi glamorie,

I sit wi my bogles dour and dowf.

Idleness and Malancolie ;

Like a braw new pennie Sol dwynes doun

Fou like my hert — but the satJ tuim.

The DeevWs Waltz

dwyne, waste away Pou, full tuim, empty

37

BRUCE MARSHALL

A Day with Mr Migou

MiGOU would have preferred to go alone with his wife
to Odette's first communion, but Mademoiselle Turbigo
and her mother insisted on coming too because first
communions were so pretty, so they said. Madame
Migou wore her best black satin dress and the fox fur for
which she had been inveigled by the advertisements in
the underground into paying twelve monthly instalments
of seventy-five francs, and Migou wore his new black
suit, or at least it had been new ten years ago. Madame
Turbigo was wearing her best clothes too, and Mademoi-
selle Turbigo herself was dressed up to the nines as usual,
but of course she wasn't wearing her best clothes because
all her clothes were best clothes nowadays now that
Monsieur Frimandiere of the Societ6 Anonyme Fri-
mandiere was her lover.

Maco and Lalus waved them off, and Maco said that
they must be sure and look in at the cafe and have a snifter
when the ceremony was over. It was a fine day, and
above their heads the sky stretched, blue and silken, Hke
Mary's girdle. The pavements were full of Uttle girls in
white going to their first communion at the chapel of
Sainte-Genevieve. The flutter of their veils smeared the
world with new hints of Christ, and even those who
had lost their faith looked at them with a tender smile.
Migou walked with a self-conscious air and wished that
Marie's new shoes wouldn't squeak so much, but he soon
grew accustomed to his new feeling of importance because
there were plenty other self-conscious looking men about
with wives and squeaking shoes. Odette walked with
her prayer-book firmly in her hand and with her head
demurely lowered.

38

BRUCE MARSHALL

There was a terrific jam in the church because all the
front seats had been reserved for the communicants, and
the parents and friends had to hugger-mugger together
at the back. A mincing cleric in surphce and cassock
ushered Madame Migou and Migou and Mademoiselle
Turbigo and her mother all into a row together, and
snuled at them with sickly insistence as though to say,
' I'm not really as holy as you think I am, and I know
you're not really as worldly as you pretend you are.'
Migou knelt and tried to pray when he saw that Marie
and Mademoiselle Turbigo and her mother were also
kneeling and trying to pray, but a woman came side-
stepping along the kneeling cushion and jabbed him in
the stomach with the ferrule of her umbrella, so he had
to begin all over again. It was a long time since he
had prayed and he started off on the first prayer he could
remember, ' Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy, hail,'
but when he got a Httle way he found that he had for-
gotten the words so he prayed instead, ' Make Odette a
good girl, not too rehgious, but make her a good girl ;
make Marie well again ; and make me soon earn more
money.' Then he sat upright and saw that, although
Madame Turbigo was sitting upright too and was gazing
at the rest of the congregation with beady, birdy curiosity,
Marie and Mademoiselle Turbigo were still praying, with
their faces jammed right down on top of their arms almost
as though they were weeping. Migou wondered if Marie
was praying that she wouldn't die, but of course she wasn't
going to die because she had been looking so much better
of late, and had been able to get through the week's
washing in a single day instead of two days like this time
last year ; but he couldn't imderstand what Mademoiselle
Turbigo had to pray about, because she couldn't very
well wish for a richer lover than she had.

The lame priest who hved above the bakery limped

39

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

in to say the mass in stiff white shining vestments. The
children in front all knelt down for die Judica me, Deus
and the Confiteor, but most of the parents stood up because
they didn't wish to look too pious in front of their friends.
When the celebrant had read the gospel the abbe Pecher
entered the pulpit to preach the sermon. He was a tall,
thin, emaciated, ill-looking priest who loved God a lot.
Migou knew him well by sight, because he was always
scurrying about the district in his cassock, taking off his
hat as pohtely to those who didn't go to mass as to those
who did.

This was a great day in the Ufe of those children who
were going to receive the Body of Christ for the first
time, die priest said, turning his sore, lighted eyes on the
parents as though trying to make them love God too. It
was a great miracle which God wrought each time that a
priest consecrated the Host at mass, because He poured
Himself Body, Soul and Divinity into the species of bread
and wine, and was as truly present on the altar as He had
been on Calvary. If men and women could only realise
this beautiful truth, was it too much to hope that social
unrest and wars might one day cease ? In Germany
Hider had given a wrong creed to youth, and youth had
lapped it up and become strong and purposeful. If the
children of France would only besiege die altar rails it
was certain that French youth would become stronger
and more purposeful than German youth, because God
was very much more powerful than Hitler. We must
also remember that in the Eucharist God slaked his thirst
for us as well as we our love for God. The priest preached
on with enthusiasm for a Uttle, and then began to repeat
himself wearily as though despairing of making the people
understand. Then he stopped and held his lined sad face
over the boys and girls as diough praying diat Christ
would cool them. Then he made die sign of the

40

BRUCE MARSHALL

Cross high over the congregation and vanished into
the sacristy.

The mass went on. The priest who lived above the
bakery prayed with Peter and Paul, with Clement, Xystus,
Cornelius, Cyprian and Lawrence. God smote Himself
down into the Host, and His precious blood welled up in
the chahce, and the sacring bell rang out and the hen
choir in the organ loft bleated, ' Benedictus qui venit in
nomine Domini J At the Agnus Dei Migou had to bury his
fece in his hands so as to hide the tears. He remembered
his own first communion and how he had sworn that no
matter how much his friends laughed at him he would
serve God for ever, and he remembered how he had
failed. By the time the sacring bell rang out again for
the Domine, non sum dignus, he was blubbering away in
ecstasy, and swearing that he would never Ue, cheat or
look lewdly at women again. ' Corpus Domini Nostrijesu
Christi custodial animam tuam in vitam aeternam ' he heard
the priest say over and over again as he passed and
repassed along the altar raUs laying the frail flake of God
on the tongues of the kneeling children, but he was unable
to look up in case people would see that he had been
weeping. When at last he raised his head the communion
was over, and the priest was back at the altar and the
candle flames had blurred to shafts of gold through the
haze of his tears.

He still felt humble and good and pious as he stood in
the street afterwards and kissed Odette because she had
just made her first communion, and he was surprised to
see that his wife and Mademoiselle Turbigo and her
mother had been weeping too. Perhaps down in them-
selves everybody wanted to love God and be pure and
brave and kind, and were deterred only because they
were silly and afraid that other people might think them
silly if they tried. After all, it was just as likely that the

41

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

world was ' about ' loving God and being pure and brave
and kind as ' about ' aeroplanes and cinemas and wireless
sets and book-keeping and central-heating systems.

They were all rather subdued as they walked back down
to the Boulevard Exelmans towards Maco's cafe, but
Maco's red face was as unconverted as ever above his
waistcoat as he stood behind his counter arguing the toss
with Lalus, who had just dropped in for a quick one in
between diddling customers. ' So everything went off
all right ? ' he shouted at them through the doorway, and
came out on to the terrace to serve them with drinks. A
cluster of concierges gathered round Odette and began to
congratulate her on her first communion. Odette stood
gravely and showed them her new prayer-book and
communion card. The concierges made a great clatter
about how beautiful Odette was and about how beautiful
the BlessM Virgin was, and then went back to their
kitchens to peel potatoes.

Migouand his wife had intended asking only Mademoi-
selle Turbigo and her mother back to lunch, but Maco
was so generous with the drinks that they felt they had
to ask him too, and then Lalus kept hanging about so
they had to ask him as well. And then as they were
about to leave the cafe Verneviil, who had just finished an
early shift on his bus, came along with Piquemelle, who
had been too badly smashed up in the war to work at all,
and of course they had to ask them also. Madame Migou
said that she was afraid that she mightn't have enough for
them all to eat, but Maco said that that wouldn't matter
at aU, and Vemeuil said diat as long as there was plenty
to drink that was all that mattered to him. Migou feh
rather proud being seen crossing the avenue with Maco
and Lalus, because they were so much wealthier than he
was and had motor cars in which diey drove their fat
hams of wives out to Fontainebleau on Sundays, but he

42

BRUCE MARSHALL

was also pleased that he had the grace of God back, golden
and bubbly within him, and wasn't ever going to want to
commit adultery again, and he knew that it wasn't just
drink but because he had seen his own daughter, flesh of
his flesh, make her first communion. Madame Lacordaire
and Lacordaire, who was home for his lunch from his
morning sail down the city's sewers, were standing about
in the entrance and looked as though they wanted to be
invited too, but Madame Migou pretended not to notice
because she knew she wouldn't have enough plates to go
round.

Maco and Lalus were already pretty well stewed, and
they put their arms round one another's necks and sang
as they took a good look at the legs of the yellow tart
who was going up the stairs in front of them.

Quand un pompier rencontre un autre pompier ^fait deux pompiers,
Maco sang.

Quand deux pompiers rencontrent un autre pompier fa fait trois
pompiers,

Lalus sang.

Quand un vicomt-e
Rencontre un autre vicomt-e
lis se racont-ent
Des histoires de vicomt-e,

Maco sang.

But behind them again Piquemelle, chmbing the stair
on Vemeuil's arm, was prophetic and serious.

' One of these fine days France is going to pay for the
selfishness of Frenchmen and for her unwiflingness to
think logically,' he said.

Migou, bringing up the rear with Odette, wondered
what the child, who had just received the Body of Christ
for the first time, must make of Maco's and Lalus'

43

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

hilarity. His soul still shining with zeal, he wanted to
shout at them to shut up and to tell them that this was a
holy day because Odette had just made a vow to love
God and to keep His commandments, but he knew that
he couldn't do so without being guilty of the solecism of
asserting that religion was true outside church as well as
inside.

They all crowded into the tiny flat and stood about,
making it seem tinier. While Marie was hunting out
extra plates Migou poured vermouth for his guests.
Odette moved among them in her white dress, gravely
showing her prayer-book and her communion card.
Some nodded at her absent-mindedly, and some came
back from their potations to be little again and to walk
for a flicker with Christ. Migou could not read from her
eyes whether the child was loving Jesus because she had a
sacrament in her soul or because she was wearing a pretty
dress. On the communion card Our Lady looked like
Lilian Gish, and had round her head a printed hoop which
said that she was the Immaculate Conception.

Before they sat down to eat the gentlemen asked if they
might put themselves at their ease, which meant that they
took off their jackets and put on their caps. There
weren't enough chairs to go round so Migou sat on the
bed. Maco said he would sit on the bed if Mademoiselle
Turbigo sat on the bed with him, but the yellow tart said
that she would be afraid to risk her virtue, at which there
was general laughter. The fixst course was hors-d'oeuvres
vari&, and all the guests heaped their plates with slodging
great helpings of sardines, anchovies, shrimps, oUves,
potato salad, herrings, Russian salad, beetroot, meat paste
and oeufs durs mayormaise. Napkins were tucked imder
collars and bodices, and knives seized half-way down the
handles as though they were entrenching tools. Migou
was sad at the thought of the money the feast was costing

44

BRUCE MARSHALL

him, but he soon worried no longer when he caught
sight of Marie's friendly face.

' It's funny, this God business,' Vemeuil said. ' Every-
thing evolved from mud so there's no God.' Odette
looked sadly up from her plate.

' I'd like there to be Our Lady aU the same,' she said.

Migou was so shocked that he dared to be angry. ' Of
course there's a God,' he said, stretching across to the
table and patting the child's hand. ' Don't you worry
about that. You've only to look at the stars at night to
understand.'

' Our friend Migou's becoming a parson,' Maco
mocked.

' There are parsons and parsons,' Migou declared with
a courage which was not due wholly to the wine he had
drtmk. ' And the abbe Pecher's as good a parson as any
in France, and what's more he preached a very good
sermon this morning. And after all what the priests say
about loving your neighbour is only common sense. If
we all loved our neighbours there'd be no wars. Just
think of how we all try to do our landlords down, for
example, leaving the Ught on in the stairs so that they
have to pay more money. Now if we were as careful of
our landlord's property as our own our landlords might
be kinder to us and reduce the rent. And then if we were
to try the same thing on an international scale ..."
Conscious that he had never made such a long speech
in front of Maco and Lalus before, Migou broke off
unhappily.

' There'U always be wars,' Piquemelle said out of his
sore sightless eyes. ' There'll always be wars for the same
reason as we never learned the truth about Stavisky :
human nature. And one of these foiu' mornings there's
going to be a very big war indeed.'

' There's the Maginot Line all the same,' Maco said,

45

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

sloodging a great gush of wine over a mouthful of food.
' We're as safe as houses behind that.'

' There are twice as many German babies bom every
year as there are French babies,' Piquemelle said.

' There's the Maginot Line, I tell you, and then there's
always England,' Maco said.

' I fought in one war and I'm not going to fight in
another,' Verneuil said. 'The next time the strafing
begins I'm doing a bunk.'

' Oh, no you won't,' Migou said. ' You'll " march,
child of the fatherland, that no impure race may feed on
the furrows of our fields." '

' All that's stupid,' Lalus said. ' For one thing Hitler
hasn't got the mass of the German people behind him,
although of course they've got to pretend that they're
behind him. And there are too many Germans ahve who
know what war is.'

' I think war's terrible,' Madame Turbigo said.

' There oughtn't really to be any wars after what Jesus
said, ought there ? ' Odette said.

' What France needs more than anything else is dis-
cipline,' Piquemelle said.

But this was a hard saying and nobody could bear it,
so they all scowled a little at Piquemelle even although
he had been so terribly wounded for France, and shook
their heads in commiseration.

Si demain tu vois ma tcmt-e

Compliment-e-

La de ma part.

Maco sang to change the subject.

The next course was roast mutton plugged with garlic.
Everybody began to smell Uke acetylene bmps, although
as they all smelt together nobody smelt anybody else.

46

BRUCE MARSHALL

Maco ate more noisily than anybody else, pronging great
slices of meat on to his fork and ramming them into his
mouth with a flourish, and washing them down with
gigantic gulps of wine. Everybody talked with their
mouths full and nobody listened. Odette alone was
silent, picking her meat with grave endeavour. Migou
wondered if she were wondering what this bibbing and
gluttony had to do with loving Him Whose kingdom
was not of this world, but wheii the coffee and the
liqueurs were served and she slid silently from the room
he was too imbecilically drunk himself to wonder about
anything at all.

Maco ripped open his waistcoat. Through a gap in his
shirt his (fistended belly bulged out like the inside of a
football.

' Life's lovely all the same,' he said.

' There's only one thing I need and that's to win the
big prize in the lottery,' Verneuil said.

' If I won I'd buy a yacht,' Maco said.

' There's no two ways about it,' Lalus said. ' When
one wins one must be discreet. One mustn't be Uke
Bonhoure and run ofif with one's ticket to the Pavilion
de Flore the day the result of the draw's announced.
When I win I'll get the bank to cash my ticket for me.
Like that I won't have a lot of camels queueing up outside
the shop to cadge on me.'

' If I win rU say " merde " to the managing director of
the Society des Transports en Commuii de la Region
Parisienne,' Verneuil said. ' And I'll never do another
stroke of work as long as I Hve.'

' And if I won I'd send you to Switzerland,' Migou said,
smiling at the familiar tender face of his wife.

' And if I win I'll buy a new wireless set,' Madame
Turbigo said. ' Something that makes a noise.'

'That's another thing that's ruining France,' Piquemelle

47

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

said. ' The philosophy of faciUty. And then to be sure
of winning you'd have to live for thirty-six thousand six
hundred and sixty-six years and take a ticket in every
dravir.'

' That's nonsense,' Maco said. ' Monsieur Bonhoure
won the first time he took a ticket.'

Piquemelle didn't answer, but everybody could see that
he was annoyed. Migou began to feel sorry that he had
invited him, because although he respected him for his
wounds he really was a gloomy fellow with all his talk
of another war. Lalus started boasting that he could
still make love to three girls one after another provided
they were pretty enough. With the remnants of his new
zeal Migou tried not to listen, but the vnne he had drunk
was stronger and he was soon laughing as loudly as the
rest. Down on the terrace of Maco's cafe he could hear
the guffavre of other parents celebrating their children's
union with God. He emptied bis Hqueur glass and tipped
himself our some more brandy. All was for the best in
the best of worlds ; it was the month of May, the month
of Mary.

Yellow Tapers for Paris

48

ANDREW YOUNG

The Paps of Jura

Before I crossed the sound

I saw how from the sea
These breasts rise soft and round.

Not two but three ;

Now, cUmbing, I clasp rocks

Storm-shattered and sharp-edged.

Grey ptarmigan their flocks,
With starved moss wedged ;

And mist like hair hangs over

One barren breast and me.
Who climb, a desperate lover.

With hand and knee.

The White Blackbird

Hard Frost

Fhost called to water ' Halt ! '

And crusted the moist snow with sparkling salt ;

Brooks, their own bridges, stop, ,

And icicles in long stalactites drop,

And tench in water-holes

Lurk under gluey glass like fish in bowls.

In the hard-rutted lane

At every footstep breaks a brittle pane.

And tinkling trees ice-bound,

Changed into weeping willows, sweep the ground ;

Dead boughs take root in ponds

And ferns on windows shoot their ghostly fronds.

(768) 4p 6

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

But vainly the fierce firost
Interns poor fish, ranks trees in an armed host.
Hangs daggers firom house-eaves
And on the windows ferny ambush weaves ;
In the long war grown warmer
The sun will strike him dead and strip his armour.

The Green Man

The Fear

How ofi:en I turn round

To face the beast that bound by bound

Leaps on me from behind,

Only to see a bough that heaves

With sudden gust of wind

Or blackbird raking withered leaves.

A dog may find me out

Or badger toss a white-lined snout ;

And one day as I softly trod

Looking for nothing stranger than

A fox or stoat I met a man

And even that seemed not too odd.

And yet in any place I go

I watch and Hsten as all creatures do

For what I cannot see or hear.

For something warns me everywhere

That even in my land of birth

1 trespass on the earth.

The White Blackbird

50

F FRASER DARLING

The Atlantic Seal

The Atlantic seal feeds largely on rock fish such as saithe,
poUack or lythe, and on some crustaceans. Therefore it
is a coastal species, though not of the inner sheltered coasts
as is Phoca vitulina. Wherever there are skerries round
which the rock fishes hve, there a seal takes his place for
the summer, fishing diligently and eating far more fish
than is needed to provide the energy he is using. This
is the time when the animals are laying on fat underneath
the skin, probably a hundredweight and a half of soft fat.
Lighthousemen report them from the Flannans, Dhu
Artach and Skerryvore, from Cape Wrath, Stoer and
Rudh' Re, from the Butt of Lewis and Barra Head, and
all remark on the fact that they normally disappear in
August.

If the observer is at a breeding station, say Rona or
Treshnish, in June, he will not find the place deserted.
Some seals, both young and adult, will be found feeding
round the islands. My own estimate is that about lo per
cent of the population remains to harvest the fish of
the immediate neighbourhood of the breeding ground.
There is, perhaps, a disproportionate number of yearlings,
but it cannot be said at all that yearhngs do not migrate,
for the appearance of these about West Highland coasts
farther inshore and in more sheltered waters than the
adults is a noticeable phenomenon in late spring. Their
faded coats are yellowy-fawn in colour and they are not
unlike the common seal in size and appearance. Their
habits nearly approach these of the common seal at this
time, and it is mostly these yearlings (eight to nine
months old) which cause the trouble in the salmon
bag nets.

51

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Some or possibly all of these migrant yearlings do not
come back to the breeding ground in the first season, a
habit comparable with that of some birds that take more
than one year to come to maturity. Different colonies
vary in the number of yearhngs to be seen in the breeding
season. There were a few on Rona, none at Limga of the
Treshnish and many at Oronsay. It would appear that
at each nursery there are conditions or traditions influ-
encing movements and age-groupings to be seen during
the autumn breeding season. These influences are not
yet known. Exacdy the same state of affairs may be
observed at Britain's gannetries, and the parallelism
between the sea birds and seals in this and other respects
is a matter for the naturahst's wonder.

The observer on the nursery islands from July onwards
sees the number, of seals gradually increasing. They
begin to spend more time out of the water in August,
but not on the main mass of the island as yet. Both at
the Treshnish Isles and at North Rona there are certain
skerries favoured by the immigrant seals, and it is on these
they gather, lying hauled out in close groups. The adult
bulls tend to have a rock of their own where they almost
overlap each other in their slumbers — ^and still there is no
quarrelling. There are many buUs to be seen as well
among the increasing numbers of cows on these resting
rocks. Covs^ are more quarrelsome and more vocal than
the bulls, but they pack close all the same. A certain
number of yellow yearlings haul out on some rocks, but
other skerries are frequented wholly by adults, and it is
at these latter places that it is possible to make accurate
counts of the increase of numbers through late siunmer.
Here is a typical example from Rona, the counts being
made during the afternoon each day, at which time
lying-out is common :

On 14th August — 56 ; 15th — 72 ; i6th — 103 ; spell of
52 /

F FRASER DARLING

rough weather during which the rocks were untenable ;
26th — 170.

The annual association of the seals with the land is their
time of greatest danger. There is possible danger of
predatory animals, including man, to an animal whose
activity is much curtailed by being ashore ; there is the
danger of the Hcking surf and the equinoctial spring tides
to the young calves, and the very massing of the beasts
produces quarrelsome behaviour which may bring casual-
ties. The social system of the seals, as well as their
metaboUsm, has become fmely adapted to lessening this
danger — ^and the preliminary resting period on the out-
lying skerries observed at two widely differing nurseries
is in hne with this axiom. The animals certainly quarrel
on these rocks, but not seriously, and as no territorial
behaviour is shown they are able to mass close together.

This resting period fmishes at the end of August and
now the adult bulls begin to come ashore to the breeding
grounds. It is amazing to see the climbing power of
these 9-foot and 6-7-cwt. animals. There is great grip-
ping strength in their hands, which hold on while their
belly muscles contract and expand as they heave them-
selves upward and forward. The buUs take up their
chosen places and lie quiet there. Preferably they lie by
a shallow pool of water, which becomes more or less the
centre of their territory and is the place where coition
occurs later. Now the Treshnish Isles are volcanic in
origin, with sheer cliffs falling to erosion platforms at
approximately sea level. These shelves of lava are the
breeding ground of the seals. The animals cannot get
far away from the sea and we find the territories of the
bulls set in linear fashion along the coast. Rona is cliff-
bound, and an immense swell makes the sea's edge a
dangerous place. The seals of Rona come farther inland
and stay there without frequent return to the sea. The

53

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

bulls come as far as 300-400 yards from the water and as
high as 300 feet above it. The plan of the territories,
therefore, is not linear as on the Treshnish, but like a
honeycomb or draught-board.

Cows come into die territories from the sea two to five
days before calving, and the number of seals ashore
increases throughout September. On one strip of shore
on the Treshnish Isles where the first bull took up his
territory on 28th August, numbers grew from two on
that date to seventy-eight on 15th September. The cows
leave first for the sea as the breeding season dechnes, and
once more the seals are found on the resting rocks, lying
in close masses. There they He like empty bags during
late November and December, changing their coats, and
it is not until this is completed that the seals retmn to the
sea and leave the breeding island for the feeding areas
once more.

Let us look closer at the Ufe of the seals on the breeding
territories and nursery grounds. There are many more
adult bulls on Rona than can immediately take up
territories. These animals Ue on the rocks at a place
where there is most traffic up to the territories, and this
traffic tends to be up accepted tracks which give easiest
access. This bull rock may be called the reservoir, for
five hundred bulls can be seen there, and the cows stay
among them a short time before going up to calve. No
challenging behaviour is to be seen at the reservoir, which
is strictly neutral ground.

The bulls inland in possession of territories will not
trouble each other much either. Challenge comes from
fresh btdls emerging from the sea and working their way
up from the reservoir. Sometimes the sight of the pos-
sessor is enough to deter the new bull, but if not the
two will indulge in a primary display of weapons, com-
parable with the challenging display of stags. The bull

54

F FRASEK DARLING

rolls over from side to side, turning his head sideways in
the direction of the roll, opening his mouth and raising
his hand. The canine teeth on each side and the powerful
claws are thus shown to the opponent. An Adantic bull
seal has such a large development of muscle and foreface
that the canines cannot be seen head-on. The limit of
challenging behaviour is when the bulls come muzzle to
muzzle, heads raised. If that does not suffice there is a
fight with teeth and claws. Great rips may be made in
the hide, and once started the fight goes on for some
minutes until both appear seriously wounded. As men-
tioned in the chapter on the red deer, such biological
wastage is unusual. Sabre-rattHng is cheaper. Defeated
bulls or spent ones return to the reservoir and there all
challenging behaviour is set aside. Here again the com-
parison with the stags is close.

When a bull comes ashore for the breeding season he
IS very fat, extraordinarily fat, yet he looks what he is, as
fit as a fiddle. He has now had his last meal for a month
or two, and I would not be surprised to find after further
observation that he may go three months without a
square meal, for he will not go to sea again permanently
until he has changed his coat on the resting rocks. He
now begins to Hve on his blubber and gradually loses
condition. This is the position on Rona, but on the
Treshnish where the animals are nearer the sea the bull
will spend many hours in the water opposite his territory,
gendy patrolling the length of it. All the same, I do not
think die Treshnish bulls feed though they are in the
water. The inland territories of Rona are not kept by
the same bull from beginning to end of the breeding
season ; there is always the traffic up of fresh buUs and
down of spent ones, and it is probable that each territory
has a succession of three of four bulls, between 28th August
and 15th October, though there is little change in the

55

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

first fortnight. I cannot be certain that some of these
spent bulls do not return to the territories again, just as a
stag will come down from the resting neutral corrie, but
I do not think they do.

Atlantic seals are polygamous, each bull having four or
five cows. If the sex ratio is near equality at birth and
there is a sHghtly heavier mortality in the males thereafter,
the adult stock of a polygamous species still appears to
have a large excess of males. But assuming a succession
of three of four bulls in the territories and the normal
harem as being four or five cows, almost all of the adult
bull population will be in service some time or other
during the season, and the apparent excess of males at
any one time is no true indicator of the situation for the
season as a whole.

The cows are free to go wherever they like. Sexually
diey belong to the bull in whose territory they may
happen to be at any one moment. This is unlike the
social system of the Alaskan fur seal and of the elephant
seal [Macrorhinus angustirostris), each of which species
collects a harem of up to sixty cows, and the harems are
herded by the bulls. I am told that although quarrelsome-
ness is not common between the cows the actual crowding
and dynamic activity of the bulls are responsible for
casualties among the young, and two ardent bulls have
been known to pull a cow in two. This type of rutting
behaviour which makes for a large surplus of bulls
hanging about on the outskirts of the breeding ground,
and is associated with great disparity in size between bulls
and cows, is biologically wasteful, especially so when the
eager bulls reach the extreme of injuring cows. Bertram
(1940) has drawn attention to this correlation between
the size of bull and size of harem. In the Atlantic seal
the harem number is low and the difference in size
between sexes, though marked, is not extraordinary. A

56

F FKAS£It DARLING

big bull may measure nine feet and an adult cow is very
generally six feet long. A cow weighs between three
and four hundredweight.

The Atlantic bull seal within his territory is not extra-
ordinarily active among his few cows. They are within
an area possibly ten yards square and the cows are jealous
and quarrelsome. Were they crowded closer than this
injury to the calves might be serious and much commoner.
The matings take place eleven to fourteen days after the
birth of the calf Coition usually occurs ashore, preferably
in a shallow pool, but the bare rock or the open sea may be
used. The bull, then, has been ashore at least three weeks
without any cow having been in season. During all this
time he has been ready to fight for his territory in which
sexual satisfaction has not been obtainable. The north
end of Rona is by this time — the latter end of September,
completely invaded by the seals, and some have cHmbed
a very steep hillside to the top of the ridge. I once saw a
cow seal heavy in calf half-way up the west cliffs of Rona,
where they were about 150 feet high and at an angle of
\45 degrees. Had it not been bare, rough, stable rock she
could never have fmished her cHmb. Another calf was
successfully reared at the edge of the 300-foot sheer
column of the western cliff. Professor D' Arcy Thompson
has told me that he once came on an Alaskan fur seal
bull at the summit of a lull about 2,000 feet high.

All these cows ashore in the territories of Rona were
ones with a calf or about to calve, and all the bulls were
adults with territories or seeking them. Now it was
indicated a Uttle earher in this chapter that the social
system of the seals was finely adapted for lessening the
^nger from their association with the land. In 1937, on
the Treshnish Isles, I had been surprised to find that no
maiden cows came ashore for breeding on the island
where we were encamped, and there were no immature

57

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

animals to be seen either. It was a puzzle circumstances
did not allow me to solve at that time. But on Rona
there is no maze of little islets and skerries ; the observer
can see almost everything to do with the seals from the
island itself I found that the maiden cows collected on
the large flat skerry, Loba Sgeir,^ at the south-west comer
of the island, and a few were to be seen among the
reservoir of bulls on Leac Mor Fianuis. There was a
large number of bulls on Loba Sgeir, mostly young adults,
and that was where the mating of the maiden and the
barren cows took place. This flat skerry is practically
always safe for the seals because it is ringed by a very bad
surf, but it would not serve as a place for the calf to be
born on, for the sea washed right over it in really bad
gales. It was observed that no breeding territories were
apparent on Loba Sgeir. Bulls and cows lay cheek by
jowl and mating occurred with comparatively Uttle
quarrelling. In fact two- to three-year-old seals are far
more playful than those in any other age class. I saw
frequent mock battles taking place on Loba Sgeir between
young bulls, sometimes between a cow and a bull, but
only rarely between yoxmg cows. Like their older sisters
they were too apt to become seriously quarrelsome.

It is not desired to draw a teleologicd conclusion, but
one must point, all the same, to the value which the fuUy
adult territorial behaviour has for the survival of the
calves. It makes for sufficient room for each cow and
calf during that fevered fortnight of maternal jealousy
after the calf is born. At the same time, I do not wish to
imply that unlimited room or sohtariness is a good thing
for cow and calf The point will be mentioned again
below.

There remains to be described the behaviour of mother
and calf and to note the interesting metaboUc processes

' Note the name Loba Sgeii and the Portuguese name for seal, Lobito.
58

F PHASER DARLING

which fit them for a period of life outside their chosen
element. Birth is usually very rapid and the afterbirth is
shed within half an hour. The calf when born is clad in
a thick coat of fluffy hair, cream or ashen in colour. The
head appears large and discrete from the body, and the
hmbs look relatively long, for as yet the calf is thin. If
a still-born calf is skinned a dense loofah-Hke layer of
connective tissue is found immediately below the skin,
This tissue opens up to accommodate fat in the same way
as a new loofah opens up to take water. The new-born
calf is about thirty inches long and weighs about thirty
pounds.

The mother takes very little notice of the calf for the
first quarter of an hour after birth ; then she offers it her
two teats and within half an hour the calf is taking its
first meal of milk which is ten times as rich in fat as cow's
milk ; she does not Uck it at all though she will smell it.
The first two days of its life the seal calf is more active
than it is for the next month. It is possible to tell a new
calf at a glance because its two hind fl^ippers tend to spread
to the side and it half-uses them in scrambling about those
journeys of a few yards hither and thither. After two
days the flippers remain longitudinal and are not used.
Here, presumably, is some measure of evolutional
recapitulation, a half-successful use of the hind feet for
a few hours. These small adventures of the calf are
responsible for much trouble between the cows, and any
calf is hable to be severely bitten by a cow not its mother.
If a bull finds a calf in his way he wiU pick it up and shake
it (thirty poimds is nothing to him) and put it down again
unhurt.

The over-anxiousness and jealousy of the cows over
their calves mean that the bull of a harem is sometimes
attacked with great ferocity. The buU backs away
quickly fi-om the cow behaving in this fashion and makes

59

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

as if to defend himself only when the cow is upon him
and then he does her but little harm.

I have asked myself why, if the cows are so jealous,
they should be so closely gregarious ? The limited
number of suitable nursery sites might impose a density
of population causing extreme quarrelsomeness, but after
seeing two different nurseries, I think the seals could spread
out more if they wished. There is a probable biological
advantage, but again it is not suggested that the closely
gregarious habit and constant fussiness are followed
because of any end they may serve. I found that in places
where the cows could get to and from the water easily —
as on the Treshnish Isles — they spend much more time
out of the water with their calves when they are closely
gregarious than when they are isolated. If predatory
animals were present there would be an obvious advantage
in the cows remaining with the calves.

Immediately after the first feed the cow begins to show
maternal affection, which increases in intensity during the
following three or four days. She shuffles roimd in order
to touch the calf with her muzzle and then to scratch it
lightly with her fore-paw. This scratching is a habit
almost invariably practised after feeding has taken place,
and after the first feed the calf comes itself towards the
mother's head and is scratched from head to tail down the
back.

The seals of Rona have their calves well up from the
sea, so the danger from swell and spring tides is small.
But on the Treshnish Isles the calves are never more than
a few yards from the water's edge. One is accustomed to
seeing carnivorous animals carrying their young in their
mouths in the face of danger, but the Atlantic seal cannot
do this. She has but one young, weighing 30 lb. at
birth, and the closeness of her head to the ground makes
it almost impossible for her to carry the calf.

60

F PHASER DARLING

What the cow can do for her calf, then, is limited, but
that little she does well. I have seen a cow move her
newly bom calf twenty to thirty yards by shuffling it along
between her paws. Where there is a heavy surf with
ground swell at high tide, the cow Ues below her calf at
the water's edge and breaks the force of the waves to the
calf She curk herself almost half round it, and the calf
is caught against her instead of being sucked back by the
swell into the sea. If the calf is perverse, its mother will
make as if to snap, and these threats are successful in
helping to get the calf above the reach of the surf I saw
a cow on Rona holding her calf against the cHffwith her
paws at a place where it could climb on to a ledge. This
type of behaviour is often conducted with perseverance,
and I have seen a cow maintain it for the six tides of a
three-day onshore gale at the time of a spring tide.

Young grey seal calves will play happily in the pools
of an erosion platform or in the sea if it is quiet and there
is an easy beach for them to climb ashore. But their long
white coats are unsuitable for much swimming exercise
and a calf would not seek escape into the sea. If they get
there by accident such as by the lick of the swell at high
spring tides, young calves will swim vigorously and make
vaHant efforts to get ashore. Sometimes, when they have
been unsuccessful, I have examined the bodies. The claws
have been worn away ; the chin and palms of the hands
have been raw. At these times the calf cries pitifully with
almost exactly the sound of a human child.

The calf is fed at about two-hourly intervals during the
first few days and then at rather longer periods. Each
meal appears to be a good one, for suckling takes from
ten minutes to half an hour. The growth rate is very
rapid, for it reaches about eighty-four pounds weight at a
fortnight old, i.e. an average of four pounds a day. This
increase has been made on milk alone and wholly at the

6i

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

expense of the mother's body, for when she comes up
from the sea before calving she starves until she returns
after weaning the calf. An observer is soon able to teU
to a day how long any cow has been out of the sea by her
degree of fatness. Similarly, the age of a calf can be
judged accurately by its increasing degree of famess. A
cow loses about two hundred pounds weight between
calving time and her return to the sea after changing her
coat, and a bull loses three hundred pounds or more in the
same time.

The calf begins to shed the fluffy white coat at thirteen
days, beginning on the muzzle, the paws and a patch on
the beUy ; it assumes a very beautiful blue coat within
the next fortnight. This is a time when the calf moves
very little at all. It is common to see an almost-blue calf
lying in the middle of the old hair which it has been
several days in casting and rubbing off its back by rolling
this way and that.

The time when the white coat is shed is synchronous
with weaning. In this species, as in many other mammals
and birds, the birth coat of fluffy hair or down appears to
have a highly valent quahty for the mother. Once hard
fur or feathers are showing, maternal care rapidly declines.
There is variation in maternal care. Most calves are
weaned at precisely a fortnight old, but a few are suckled
to three weeks, and I once saw one in full-blue coat being
fed by its mother. At weaning they are left absolutely
by their mothers and have to fmd their ovra way to the
sea — the same process as in the gannet, the puffin and the
petrels and shearwaters.

The calves have but a Uttle way to go on the Treshnish
Isles, and they already have some experience of going in
and out of the water in playful fashion ; but on North
Rona where many are born high on the island or on the
edges of the chfFs the journey is fraught with danger.

62

P PHASER DARLING

Many make sheer drops of fifty to seventy-five feet into
the sea. These calves, which have fed and prospered so
richly on nothing but mother's milk, face a period of
complete starvation firom a fortnight old. They may get
to the sea in a week, but some take a month to do it and
even then do not appear in an urgent hurry. From a
telescoped infancy they enter a protracted childhood, for
their Hve-weight increase from then to one year old is
small. The calves of the season can be easily recognized by
their extreme buoyancy. When they rise to the surface
a good half of them comes into view like a bobbing cork.
Conversely, if the adult animals are frightened into the
sea when chianging their coats, their lack of buoyancy is
apparent.

I have been struck by the soHtary nature of month-old
calves which have newly taken to the sea. They fmd
Uttle crabs and molluscs and may sometimes be seen on
the sea-bottom from a cliff above turning over stones
with their little hands. Gregariousness has to be re-
established, and at a year old, or rather nine months, it is
obvious how they have formed a group of their own with
favoured rocks for lying out.

The complex social system, the specialized metabolic
processes, and the protracted gestation period of eleven
and a half months which allows calving and mating
within a short period ashore, all combine to lessen the
whole time of association with the land. One thing
remains for us to remember — the flocking of these seals
to a very few breeding stations, and their comparative
helplessness ashore at that time, lay them open to particular
danger from exploiting mankind seeking commercial gain.
It is for us all to protect the seals adequately, for of few
other species have we such a rich heritage.

Natural History in the Highlands and Islands

63

HUGH MACDIARMID

Wheesht, Wheesht

Wheesht, wheesht, my fooUsh hert,
For weel ye ken
I widna ha'e ye stert
Auld ploys again.

It's guid to see her Ue
Sae snod an' cool,
A' lust o' lovin' by —
Wheesht, wheesht, yefule I

Penny Wheep
snod, tidy

Blind Mans Luck

He just sits oolin' owre the fixe
And gin' a body speak t' him, fegs.
Turns up the whites o's een
Like twa oon eggs.

' I've riped the bike o' Heaven,' quo' he,

' And whaur ma sicht s'ud be I've stuck

The toom doups o' the sun

And mune, for luck ! '

Petmy Wheep

oolin', douching fegs, faith ! oon, shell-less, addle ripe, pillage
bike, nest toom, empty doups, ends

Somersault

I lo'e the stishie
O' earth in space
Breengin' by
At a haliket pace.
aishie, rumpus, hullabaloo Breengin', bursting, hurtling haliket, headlong

64

HUGH MACDIARMID

A wecht o' hills
Gangs wallopin' owre.
Syne a whummlin' sea
Wi' a gallus glower.

The West whuds doon

Like the pigs at Gadara,

But the East's aye there

Like a sow at the farrow.

Penny iVheep

wecht, weight whummlin', overturning gallus, callous
whuds, dashes, thuds by

Sabine

A LASS cam' to oor gairden-yett
An' ringle-e'ed was she,
And sair she spiered me for a leaf,
A leaf o' savin-tree.

An' white as a loan-soup was she.
The lass wha'd tint her snood,
But oot my gudewife cam' an' straucht
To rate the slut begood.

The lassie looked at her an' leuch,
' Och, plaise yersel',' said she,
' Ye'd better gi'e me what I seek

Than learn what I've to gi'e.'

Penny Wheep

yett, gate ringle-e'ed, showing whites of eyes spiered, besought

savin'-tree, sabine, said to kill fetus in womb

white {as a loan-soup), pallid (as thin and weak as charity soup)

tint her snood, dishonoured herself begood, began

(766)

65

NORMAN DOUGLAS

The Werewolf

Deprived of converse 1 relapsed into a doze, but soon
woke up with a start. The carriage had stopped ; it was
nearly midnight ; we were at Terranova di Sibari, whose
houses were Ht up by the silvery beams of the moon.

Thurii — death-place of Herodotus ! How one would
like to see this place by dayUght. On the ancient site,
which Hes at a considerable distance, they have excavated
antiquities, a large number of which are in the possession
of the Marchese Galli at Castrovillari. I endeavoured to
see his museum, but found it inaccessible for ' family
reasons.' The same answer was given me in regard to a
valuable private library at Rossano, and, armoying as it
may be, one cannot severely blame such local gentlemen
for keeping their collections to themselves. What have
they to gain from the visits of inquisitive travellers ?

During these meditations on my part the old man
hobbled busily to and fro with a bucket, bearing water
from a fountain near at hand wherewith to splash the
carriage wheels. He persisted in this singular occupation
for an unreasonably long time. Water was good for the
wheels, he explained ; it kept them cool.

At last we started, and I began to slumber once more.
The carriage seemed to be going down a steep incline ;
endlessly it descended, with a pleasant swaying motion.
... Then an icy shiver roused me from my dreams. It
was the Crati whose rapid waves, fraught with unhealthy
chills, rippled brightly in the moonhght. We crossed
the malarious valley, and once more touched the hills.

From those treeless slopes there streamed forth deh-
ciously warm emanations stored up during the scorching
hours of noon ; the short scrub that clothed them was

66

NORMAN DOUGLAS

redolent of that peculiar Calabrian odour which haunts
one like a melody — an odour of dried cistus and other
aromatic plants, balsamic by day, almost overpowering
at this hour. To aid and diversify the symphony of
perfume I lit a cigar, and then gave myself up to contem-
plation of the heavenly bodies. We passed a sohtary
man, walking swiftly with bowed head. What was he
doing there ?

' Lupomanaro,' said the driver.

A werewolf. . . .

Old Calabria

The Peasant

I REMEMBER watching an old man stubbornly digging a
field by himself. He toiled through the flaming hours,
and what he lacked in strength was made up in the
craftiness, malizia, born of long love of the soil. The
ground was baked hard ; but there was still a chance of
rain, and the peasants were anxious not to miss it.
Knowing this kind of labour, I looked on from my vine-
wreathed arbour with admiration, but without envy.

I asked whether he had not children to work for him.

' All dead — and health to you 1 ' he rephed, shakmg his
white head dolefully.

And no grandchildren ?

' All Americans [emigrants].'

He spoke in a dreamy fashion of years long ago when
he too had travelled, sailing to Africa for corals, to
Holland and France ; yes, and to England also. But our
dockyards and cities had faded from his mind ; he
remembered only our men.

' Che bella gioventh — che hella gioventit I ' [a sturdy
brood], he kept on repeating. ' And lately,' he added,

67

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

' America has been discovered.' He toiled fourteen hours
a day, and he was eighty-three years old.

Apart from that creature of fiction, the peasant infabula
whom we all know, I can fmd Uttle to admire in this
whole class of men, whose talk and dreams are of the
things of the soil, and who know of nothing save the
regular interchange of summer and winter with their
unvarying tasks and rewards. None save a Cincinnatus
or Garibaldi can be ennobled by the spade. In spleenful
moments, it seems to me that the most depraved of city
dwellers has flashes of enthusiasm and self-abnegation
never experienced by this shifty, retrogressive and un-
generous brood, which lives like the beasts of the field
and has learnt all too much of their logic. But they have
a beast-virtue hereabouts which compels respect — con-
tentment in adversity. In this point they resemble the
Russian peasantry. And yet, who can pity the moujik ?
His cheeks are altogether too round, and his morals too
superbly bestial ; he has clearly been created to sing and
starve by turns. But the Italian peasant who spedcs in
the tongue of Homer and Virgil and Boccaccio is easily
invested with a halo of martyrdom ; it is delightful to
sympathise with men who combine the manners of Louis
Quatorze with the profiles of Augustus or Plato, and who
still recall, in many of their traits, the pristine life of
Odyssean days. Thus, they wear today the identical
' clouted leggings of oxhide, against the scratches of the
thorns ' which old Laertes bound about his legs on the
upland farm in Ithaka. They call them galandrine.

Old Calabria

68

NORMAN DOUGLAS

The Dragon

What is a dragon ? An animal, one might say, which
looks or regards (Greek drakon) ; so called, presumably,
from its terrible eyes. Homer has passages which bear
out this interpretation :

TifiepSaXeov Se SeSopKev, etc.

Now the Greeks were certainly sensitive to the ex-
pression of animal eyes — witness ' cow-eyed ' Hera, or
the opprobrious epithet ' dog-eyed ' ; altogether, the
more we study what is left of their zoological researches,
the more we realise what close observers they ^yere in
natural history. Aristotle, for instance, points out sexual
diiferences in the feet of the crawfish which were over-
looked up to a short time ago. And Hesiod also insists
upon the dragon's eyes. Yet it is significant that ophis,
the snake, is derived, hke drakon, from a root meaning
nothing more than to perceive or regard. There is no
connotation of ferocity in either of the words. Gesner
long ago suspected that the dragon was so called simply
from its keen or rapid perception.

One likes to search for some existing animal prototype
of a fabled creature like this, seeing that to invent such
things out of sheer nothing is a feat beyond human
ingenuity — or, at least, beyond what the history of others
of their kind leads us to expect. It may well -be that the
Homeric writer was acquainted with the Uromastix
lizard that occurs in Asia Minor, and whoever has watched
this beast, as I have done, cannot fail to have been
impressed by its contemplative gestures, as if it were
gazing intently (drakon) at something. It is, moreover, a
' dweUer in rocky places,' and more than this, a vegetarian
— an ' eater of poisonous herbs.' as Homer somewhere

69

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

calls his dragon. So Aristotle says : ' When the dr^on
has eaten much fruit, he seeks the juice of the bitter
lettuce ; he has been seen to do this.'

Are we tracking the dragon to his lair ? Is this the
aboriginal beast ? Not at all, I should say. On the
contrary, this is a mere side-issue, to foUow which would
lead us astray. The reptile-dragon was invented when
men had begun to forget what the arch-dragon was ; it
is the product of a later stage — the materialising stage ;
that stage when humanity sought to explain, in naturalistic
fashion, the obscure traditions of the past. We must
delve still deeper. . . .

My own dragon theory is far-fetched — perhaps neces-
sarily so, dragons being somewhat remote ammals. The
dragon, I hold, is the personification of the life within
the earth — of that life which, being unknown and uncon-
trollable, is eo ipso hostile to man. Let me explain how
this point is reached.

The animal which looks or regards. . . . Why — why
an animal ? Why not drakon = that which looks ?

Now, what looks ?

The eye.

This is the key to the understanding of the problem,
the key to the subterranean dragon-world.

The conceit of fountains or sources of water being
things that see (drakon) — that is, eyes — or bearing some
resemblance to eyes, is common to many races. In Italy,
for example, two springs m the inland sea near Taranto
are called ' Occhi ' — eyes ; Arabs speak of a watery
fountain as an eye ; the notion exists in England too — ^in
the ' Blentarn ' of Cumberland, the blind tarn (tarn = a
trickling of tears), which is ' blind ' because dry and
waterless, and therefore lacking the bright lustre of the
open eye.

70

NORMAN DOUGLAS

There is an eye, then, in the fountain : an eye which
looks or regards. And inasmuch as an eye presupposes a
head, and a head without body is hard to conceive, a
material existence was presently imputed to that which
looked upwards out of the Uquid depths. This, I think,
is the primordial dragon, the archetype. He is of animistic
descent and survives all over the earth ; and it is precisely
this universaUty of the dragon idea which induces me to
discard all theories of local origin and to seek for some
common cause. Fountains are ubiquitous, and so are
dragons. There are fountain dragons in Japan, in the
superstitions of Keltic races, in the Mediterranean basin.
The dragon of Wantley lived in a well ; the Lambton
Worm began Ufe in firesh water, and only took to dry
land later on. I have elsewhere spoken of the Man-
fredonia legend of Saint Lorenzo and the dragon, an
indigenous fable connected, I suspect, with the fountain
near the harbour of that town, and quite independent of
the newly imported legend of Saint Michael. Various
springs in Greece and Italy are called Dragoneria ; there
is a cave-fountain Dragonara on Malta, and another of
the same name near Cape Misenum — all are sources of
apposite lore. The water-drac . . .

Old Calabria

Mr Heywood

Mr James Heywood, of 26 Kensington Palace Gardens,
was a sort of cousin ; he had a noble paunch and a rosy,
clean-shaven countenance, softly beaming. His house,
and the lawn at the back of it on which I used to disport
myself, were my earliest impressions of London, dating
from 1876 or 1877. It was Heywood who gave me the
first English book I read by myself, Erling the Bold. He

71

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

was a kindly old fellow ; one never went there from school
without receiving half a sovereign or a sovereign as tip
(' boys need money more than we do,' he used to say) ;
he took you to the Lyceum to see Romeo and Juliet with
Irving and Ellen Terry, or to the Westminster Aquarium
where you could admire Pongo, the furst gorilla, and a
lady called Zaza who was shot out of a cannon ; he built
a public drinking foimtain in the wall just outside the
north entrance of Kensington Palace Gardens ; and,
among other things of that kind, he had also brought out
an English version of Heer's important work on Die
Urwelt der Schweiz. I think he was a Fellow of the
Royal Society.

So far good ; but meanwhile he was growing madder
from day to day — a bundle of innocent eccentricities.
He wore wigs of different colours, white, brown, grey
and black, as the fancy moved him ; he carried a supply
of ginger-breads in his pocket because ' you never know
when you may be hungry ' ; worse still, he took to
mixing up one person with another, which was awkward,
especially at dinner-parties ; for he was obstinate about
it, and stuck to his mistake.

Albeit he had become decidedly pecuhar, 1 kept up my
friendship with him, partly because I liked him (he was
one of those who were kind to me as a boy — ^spontane-
ously kind, I mean, and not out of a Victorian sense of
duty), and partly, I confess, because I liked also his
succulent, long-drawn-out luncheons, and the exquisite
bottle of port which followed. Those were luncheons of
the old school, when men were neither afraid of paying
for good things, nor yet of eating them. Now we have
calories and vitamins — sheer funk — and, even among the
rich, a cheeseparing spirit which is a disgrace to civiUsation.
The things they expect you to eat !

I called on old Heywood for the last time one afternoon

72

NORMAN DOUGLAS

in 1890. The butler, as usual, showed me into his study,
which was on the right-hand side of the hall. He was
alone in there. He greeted me with urbanity, but without
affection. We discussed the prevailing epidemic of
influenza ; then, after a pause in which neither of us
seemed to have anything to say, he observed :

' You're not asking me much about my symptoms, are
you ? Shall I keep up the treatment ? '

' My God,' I thought, ' he is taking me for Sir Francis
Laking. And he'll be furious if I try to imdeceive him.
What's to be done ? Clear out. . . .'

' I must see you later, Mr Heywood, about that. I only
thought I would drop in for a moment ... it was on
my way ... to an important consultation ' (pulling out
my watch) ' . . . good gracious ! nearly four o'clock.
. . . Let me just feel your pulse . . . good; very good.
Steadier than last time. Yes, do keep up the treatment.
And now please forgive me for running away ' . . . and
with some such excuse, I made to depart. He caught me
by the sleeve and said :

' Ah, but you're not going away without this,' and took
a weighty Httle envelope out of a drawer and gave it me.

When opened in the street it yielded five sovereigns and
five shillings — my fee for professional attendance.

It occurred to me afterwards that an appointment may
have been made for the real Laking to call on that same
afternoon ; if so, what about his fee ?

Looking Back

Miss Wilberforce and Mr Keith

He quite understood. Miss Wilberforce must be pro-
tected against herself. And he disagreed heartily. No-
body must be protected against himself. The attitude of

73

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

a man towards his fellows should be that of non-inter-
vention, of benevolent egotism. Every person of healthy
digestion was aware of that cardinal truth. Unfortunately
persons of healthy digestions were not as common as they
might be. That was why straight thinking, on these and
other subjects, was at a discount. Nobody had a right to
call himself well disposed towards society until he had
grasped the elementary fact that the only way to improve
the universe was to improve oneself, and to leave one's
neighbour alone. The best way to begin improving one-
self was to keep one's own bowels open, and not trouble
about those of anybody else. Turkey rhubarb, in fact.
The serenity of outlook thereby attaiaed would enable
a man to perceive the futility of interfering with the
operation of natural selection.

The speaker, he went on, had dropped the word
charity. Had the tribe of Israel cultivated a smattering
of respect for psychology or any other useful science
instead of fussing about supernatural pedigrees, they
would have been more cautious as to their diet. Had they
been careful in the matter of dietary, their sacred writing
would never have seen the Hght of day. Those writings,
a monument of malnutrition and faulty digestive pro-
cesses, were responsible for three-quarters of what was
called charity. Charity was responsible for the greater
part of human mischief and misery. The revenues of the
private charities of London alone exceeded five million
sterling annually. What were these revenues expended
upon ? On keeping alive an incredible number of persons
who ought to be dead. What was the result of keeping
these people alive ? A deterioration of the whole race.
Charity consisted m setting a premium on bodily ill-
health and mental inefficiency. Charity was an oriental
nightmare ; an endeavour to raise the weak to the level
of the strong ; an incitement to improvidence. Charity

74

NORMAN DOUGLAS

disturbed the national equilibrium ; it lowered the standard
of mankind instead of raising it. Charity was an un-
mitigated nuisance which had increased, was increasing
and ought to be diminished.

By way of varying the phraseology, but not the thing,
they had called themselves philanthropists. The meaning
of that venerable word had decayed of late in character-
istic fashion. Prometheus, the archetype, brought fire
firom heaven to comfort certain people who had the wit
to appreciate its uses. He did not waste his time wet-
nursing the unfit, like a modem philanthropist. What
was a modem philanthropist ? He was a fellow who was
always bothering you to do something for somebody else.
He appealed to your purse for the supposed welfare of
some pet degenerate. Prometheus appealed to your
intelligence for the real welfare of rational beings. A
rich man found it extremely simple, no doubt, to sign a
cheque. But an act was not necessarily sensible because
it happened to be simple. People ought to dominate their
reflexes. Prometheus did not choose the simplest course
— ^he chose the wisest, and found it a pretty tough job,
too. That alone proved him to have been a man of sound
digestion and robust health. Had it been otherwise,
indeed, he would never have endured that vulture
business for so long.

The deputation exchanged glances, puzzled by this
pompous and peevish exordium. It did not promise
well ; it soimded quite unUke Mr Keith's usually bland
address. Perhaps he had not yet breakfasted. ' We
ought to have waited,' they thought. One of the hsteners
was so annoyed that he began :

' A paradox, Mr Keith, is not necessarily sensible,
because it happens to be simple ' — but was overborne by
that gentleman, who proceeded calmly :

' So much for generaHties. Now Miss Wilberforce is

75

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

a lady of independent means and of a certain age. She
is not an infant, to be protected against herself or against
others ; she has reached years of indiscretion. Like a good
many sensible persons she hves in this coimtry. Of course
a residence here has its drawbacks — ^very grave drawbacks,
some of them. But the drawbacks are counterbalanced
by certain advantages. In short, what applies to one
country does not always apply to the other. Yet you
propose to treat her exacdy as if she were Uving in
England. That strikes me as somewhat unreasonable.'
' Mr van Koppen has promised us. . . .'
' He may do what he likes with his money. But I don't
see why I should become the pivot for making my good
friend do what strikes me as a fooUsh action. I am too
fond of him for that. Mr van Koppen and myself have
many points in common ; among other things this
feature, that neither of us is of aristocratic birth. I suspect
that this is what made you count on me for a subscription.
You thought that I, having a Uttle money of my own,
might be tempted by certain sycophantic instincts to
emulate his misplaced generosity. But I am not a snob.
From the social point of view I don't care a tuppenny
damn for anyone. On the other hand, my origin has
given me something of Dr Samuel Johnson's respect for
what he calls his betters. I like the upper classes, especially
when they behave according to their old traditions. That
is why I like Miss Wilberforce. She conducts herself,
if report be true, with all the shamelessness of a bom lady.
Born ladies are not so common that we should hide
them away in nursing homes. All forceful seclusion
is dishonouring. Every Uttle insect, drunk or sober,
enjoys its freedom ; and if you gentlemen were not
philanthropists I would try to point out how g allin g your
proposal must be, how hunuliating to a lugh-spirited
woman, to be placed under lock and key, in charge

76

NORMAN DOUGLAS

of some callous attendant. But to what purpose ?
Turkey rhubarb '

' I am afraid, Mr Keith, that we have come at an
inopportune moment.'

' It is quite possible. But I won't keep you much longer
— you must be dying to attend that funeral ! In fact, I
would not detain you at all if I did not feel that you
expected some kind of explanation from me. What were
we saying ? '

' Turkey rhubarb.'

' Ah, yes ! I was trying to be fair-minded which, by
the way, is generally a mistake. It struck me that perhaps
I over-emphasized its advantages just now. Because, of
course, there is something to be said against the use of such
drugs. In fact, now I come to think of it, there is a good
deal to be said in favour of constipation. It is the cause
of our English spleenfulness, and this spleenfulness,
properly directed, has its uses. It engenders a certain
energetic intolerance of mind. I think the success of our
nation is largely due to this particular quahty. If I were
an historian I would amuse myself with proving that we
owe not only Magna Carta but our whole Empire —
Canada, Australia and all the rest of them — to our costive
habits of body. What befits a nation, however, does not
always befit a man. To crush, in a fit of chronic bilious-
ness, the resistance of Bengal and add its land to the
British Empire, may be a racial virtue. To crush, in a fit
of any kind, the resistance of oiur next-door neighbour,
Mr Robinson, and add his purse to our own, is an in-
dividual vice. No ! I fail to discover any personal
advantage to be gained from excess of bile. The bilious
eye sees intensely, no doubt, but in a distorted and narrow
fashion ; it is incapable of a generous outlook. Cloudy,
unserene ! A closing-up, instead of a widening-out. The
bowels of compassion ; what a wonderful old phrase !

77

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

They ought to be kept open. I look around me, and see
extraordinary Uttle goodwill among my fellow-creatures.
Here is Miss Wilberforce. What she yearns for is the milk
of human kindness — gentle words, gentle dealing, from
all of us. Instead of that, every one is ready to cast stones
at her. She is treated like a pariah. For my part I do not
pass her by ; I am not ashamed to consort with sinners, if
such they be ; I would like, if I could, to make her free
and happy instead of imprisoning her in a place of self-
reproach. A healthy man is naturally well-disposed, not
on principle or from any divine inspiration, but because
his bodily organs are performing their proper fimctions.
His judgment is not warped by the black humours of
indigestion. He perceives that natural laws, however
harsh they seem, are never so harsh as our amateurish
attempts to circumvent them. Modern philanthropy is
an attempt of this nature. It is crass emotionaUsm.
Regarded from the point of view of the race, your
philanthropy is a disguised form of brutahty.'

' Mr Keith ! '

' All sentimentalists are criminals.'

South Wind

Chocolate

Chocolate once stood in so high repute for the ex-
citation of desire that its employment was fiercely
condemned by the puritanical sort ; vanilla likewise ;
from our Shakespeare and others of his day we learn that
potatoes, having but recently arrived in the Eastern world,
were taken to be potent for increasing the geniture. It
was even so with tomatoes. And so it was with truffles,
upon their re-discovery in France.
Here are the quackeries which demonstrate how the

78

NORMAN DOUGLAS

wish will grow to be father to the thought. For see what
happens : the potato, now common, has ceased to be an
aphrodisiac, likewise the tomato ; truffles, costly as before,
are still esteemed as such.

Regarding chocolate, I judge it to be of neutral effect ;
a cloying product fit for serving-maids ; yet possessed of
value as an endearment, an incentive working not upon
body but upon mind ; it generates, in those who rehsh it,
a complacent and yielding disposition. Deprived of
chocolate, your lover of serving-maids is deprived of a
persuasive helpmate.

As for vaniUa, all meats flavoured with it are sickening
to the palate of grown men, though not of youth ; I had
sooner dispense with love than purchase it through the
ministration of so noisome a condiment. Inasmuch,
nevertheless, as curiosity in experiment is the mark of
every scholar ; and inasmuch as a Frenchman of today,
a Monsieur Richard, in full seriousness declares vanilla to
engender an erotkal excitation which cannot he doubted, I
essayed with equal seriousness this drug in various com-
binations ; experiencing, at the end, no more than some
slight desire to vomit.

Pcmeros

Idiots

A REALLY fine morning at last ; glorious sunshine.

' Now for those idiots,' says Mr R., and so do I. We
have found out about them from the inn people.

It appears that two, a man and a woman, come from
the Walserthal, which has always been famous for its crop
of imbeciles ; the third was bom at Raggal, likewise
fertile mother of idiots, because everybody marries into
his own family there. These Raggalers are such passion-
ate agriculturaUsts and so busy, all the year round, with

79

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

their fields and cattle, that they refiase to waste tune
scouring the province for so trivial an object as a wife with
fresh blood, when you can get a colourable substitute at
home. Our particular idiots hve, all three of them, on
the road to St Anne Church, in that workhouse which,
so far as I know, has sheltered from time immemorial the
poor of the district, the aged, the infirm of mind or body.
There is always a fine assortment of wrecks on view here.
Sisters of Charity look after them.

Sure enough, the first thing we saw was one of the
man idiots hacking wood out-of-doors. He was of the
deaf and dumb variety, with misshapen skull ; he took
no notice of us, but continued at his task with curious
deliberation, as if each stroke of the axe necessitated the
profoundest thought. Weak in the head, obviously ; but
not what I call an idiot. If he could have spoken, he
would doubtless have uttered as many witticisms as one
hears in an EngUsh pubhc-house after closing time. The
woman was also there, sitting on the bench beside a Sister
of Charity. Undersized, stupid looking, with mouth
agape ; nothing more ; I have seen society ladies not
unlike her in appearance. She can sew and knit stockings
and even talk, they had told us. Mediocre specimens,
both of them. And how about the third one, we
inquired ? He was working in the fields, said the Sister.

Working in the fields. . . .

These tlungs call themselves idiots. Even idiots, it
seems, have degenerated nowadays. Mr R. was dread-
fully disappointed ; and so was I. He vowed I had led
him to expect something on quite another scale ; and so
I had. He extracted a promise, then and there, that I
should show him over Valduna, the provincial lunatic
asylum near Rankweil, in the hope of unearthing a few
idiots worthy of the name.

Now of course you cannot have everything in this

80

NORMAN DOUGLAS

world. You cannot ask, in a district otherwise so richly

endowed by Nature as this one, for the fine jleur of im-

becihty — for cretins. To see these marvels you must go

farther afield, to places like the ValtcUina or Val d'Aosta

(and even there, I understand, the race is losing some of its

best characteristics. These doctors !). But one might

at least have kept alive a specimen or two of the old

school, just for memory's sake ; idiots such as my sister

and myself used to see, while rambling as children about

these streets with the Alte Anna, our nurse. On that very

bench where the modish lady was reclining today, or its

predecessot, there used to sit two skinny old mad women

side by side, with their backs to the wall. There they sat,

always in the same place. They were as mad as could be,

and older than the hills. A terrifying spectacle — these two

blank creatures, staring into vacuity out of pale blue eyes,

with white hair tumbhng all about their shoulders. One

of them disappeared — died, no doubt ; the survivor went

on sitting and staring, in her old place. There was another

idiot whom we Hked far better ; in fact we loved him.

He was of the joyful and jabbering kind, and he Uved near

the/actory. His facial contortions used to make us shriek

with laughter. Sometimes he dribbled at the mouth.

When he dribbled copiously, which was not every day,

it was our crowning joy.

Together

(768) 8l

G S FRASER

The Black Cherub

Per la contradizione che nol consente

Dante

Because the contradiction does not allow
Us to be happy and also to know how
I will give a penny to anyone who begs
And say my prayers at night to a girl's legs,

Because the contradiction does not consent
That what we say resemble what we meant
My sonnets perish in a burning shower,
My prose preserves the balance of the power,

Because the contradiction thinks it well
That casuists on the whole should go to hell
I shall balance revolution against heaven
And die a bourgeois still, and still unshriven.

Because the contradiction does not permit

Hegels to find a resolution for it

Hitlers who seek to unify the world

Shall be in the southernmost dames of hell curled.

With all the other fraudulent counsellors
Who tell the wicked how to cast down towers.
Who sell for gold the city or the girl.
And for whom now hell's horrid bagpipes skirl.

For they all go down to the teeth and the claws and the ice
Where Judas and Brutus realise they are not nice,
And the great poets wander and sniff from high
At the smell of hell's ineffable canaille,

82

G S FRASER

And the only lucky are like Uberto who
Thought that they knew more than they really knew,
And who swell up erect from their bed of night,
' As if they held the Inferno in great despite,'

Or the scholarly old homosexual who still

Retains a pride in his grammatical skill

And though he must dodge the column, and cannot choose,

' Runs like the sprinters who win, and not who lose.'

Since our pride is not from God, by our own will
We can keep ourselves from the filthiest pouches still :
From the lake of pitch where the devils bite like curs
Or the sea of filth that engulfs the flatterers.

But at night we may go down on our cold knees :
' To-morrow, God, make me not a drunkard, please :
But let me have the pleasure of being drunk,'
And contradiction has us, and we are sunk.

Or, ' Let my love be pure and gentle at last :

And let it be cleansed from the stains and the pains of the past

And let the girl come easily to my bed,'

And the black cherub holds the hairs of our head.

But worse than us the hypocrites who cry,

' Let the world have peace, and let the starving die :

Let the rich he in an easy bed at nights :

Let the fat dog sleep whom the wicked flea bites,

' O, let us have peace and let the heart be still :
The cold and the empty of heart will never kill :
Let the poor know how strong are the bars of the cage
That they may not shake them in their futile rage ! '

83

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

For from love alone, and not from the cold grease
Of your rich tables, will you build peace,
Nor with your poverty constrain God's plenty :
Per la contradizione che nol consente I

The Traveller has Regrett

84

NAOMI MITCHISON

Samund's Daughter

About harvest-tide there was fighting at the Ford, and
there men killed Samund Bigmouth, and with him the
EasterHng Bodvar, who was betrothed to his daughter
Gersemi. Now at the end of the day Gersemi found them
both and wailed for them, and they were brought home
to Samund's new steading. Bodvar had a great iron
sword with a hilt of sea ivory ; when he died it was
fast in his hand and the blade through a man's throat.
Gersemi took it for her own, and all winter she had it
laid beside her in bed ; but Samimd's sword went to her
eldest brother, Kol.

She was a big, hght-haired girl, with a deep voice and
old enough to have her own mind about things ; she
was red-cheeked, and her hands were rough from hay-
making and tending of beasts ; she was quick at learning
any new craft and clever vrith words ; Samund had given
her land and gear of her own. Kol and the rest of the
brothers would have had her marry some friend of theirs
now Bodvar was dead, but she would have none of it.
Wooers came cold over ice and snow to the steading,
but she sent them away with no comfort, and soon enough
it was spring and Gersemi set out across the wet pastures.

She combed and tied her hair back like a man ; she
put on breeches of grey stuff ; her shoes were of strong
ox-hide, and her gloves were sealskin, well sewn ; her
coat was woollen and thick ; over it she had ring-mail,
good against sword or axe. Her cloak was made of a
great white bear pelt from the north, a fairy bear that
once had strange dealings with the Finn wizards ; its
claws met over her breast, the head fell behind, and on
the under-side were written runes of great power. This

85

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

cloak had been part of her mother's dower, and never
did the fur wear thin. Her Uttle horse was shag-haired
and straight-backed Hke the wild hordes, but he answered
well enough to the bridle. She made fast a pack to the
saddle ; in it were strings of polished amber and some
few coloured stones and beads of coral, things that have
their price ajl the world over. She carried a Httle bow
and hunting* arrows ; but her strength was in her axe
and Bodvar's sword ; this way she looked as good a
fighter as any man south of the Ford. So she set out.

Now at first she went east, riding along by the sea
coast, because she feared to turn south and inland among
the strange forests. She swam her horse across two great
rivers, near the mouth, and came at last to a salt marsh,
very wide and fuU of small willows ; the people, too,
were not friendly, so then she must needs face south,
following up small valleys in a country for the most part
low lying and full of lakes and swamps, with but few
men in it from one week's end to the next. As it got to be
summer she found the bear pelt hot and heavy, but she
would not leave it off because of the runes on it. Some-
times she bathed and washed her clothes, but she was
afraid of being a naked woman alone, with the chance
of wild men or wandering gods and devils seeing her.
She shot deer and hares and birds, or what she could,
and ate them with roots and the uncoiling fern ends, and
when she came on a hut or a wagon she got milk and
often bread ; the folk hereabouts were mostly small
and ugly, and feared her ; she could not speak their
tongue, and she was very far firom home.

One night she and her horse rested among low trees
by the edge of a stream ; a mist rose up round them and
she slept ill, seeming to hear voices from across the stream
speaking words that were near to her own. The horse,
too, started, as more than once a mare whinnied to him,

86

NAOMI MITCHISON

close by yet out of sight or smell. In the morning the
mist was still high, so she waited till it cleared, but with
the mist the voices died away, and call or search as she
might, there was no-one at either side of the river.

Towards midsummer she came to a great wall of
mountains, pine and rock going right up into the sky ;
skirting about them for days, and follovnng up a river,
she came to a pass still under Hght snow, where the wind
cut through her bearskin and the Uttle horse stumbled
and shivered. Each side of her great peaks jagged high
and harsh towards the bright, cold sun, and she prayed
aloud to whatever gods hved there, and to her own gods,
Odin and Thor and Vidar, and to Skade, goddess of the
snow mountains in the north. So in the end she came
over the pass and down into a great tangle of valleys.
More than once men passed her, traders with mules for
the most part, and often she stayed the night in a hut and
got food and fodder there. Not once was she taken for
anything but a yoving man, and she was ever thought
well of for the sake of her sword and her gold bracelets.
The people here were beginning^ to be different ; many
were tall and fair and handsome like her own brothers,
and their tongue was near enough to hers for her to learn
it quickly and gladly.

When the pinewoods came to an end and the southward-
facing ridges flattened out to a warm green plain, she saw
a walled town before her and rode very cautiously ; yet
she had heard tell of cities, and how in strange countries
many men would bmld their steadings together and live,
as it were, all in one huge hall that no enemy could break
into. Slower and slower she went as she came near, but
it seemed all man-made, and there were children playing
by the gates of the wall, so she took courage. She
watched others riding in, and at last rode in herself, over
the boat bridge and between the towers of the gate, a

87

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

little pale, and breathing quickly as she looked from side
to side. At first the noise was terrible — all those voices :
her little horse shied at them, and so did she. Every
moment she would think they were speaking to her, and
it all went too quick for her to make out the words. But
soon she found she was only one among many and no-one
noticed her. At this she suddenly felt it was all wrong,
that here was she, daughter of Samund Bigmouth, who
had owned all the land from the Ford to Vig's Bay, but
none of the Southerlings knew ! She wanted to shout,
to draw that sword of hers, to make the shaggy horse
plunge and scatter the sweet-sellers and ride them down !
Oh, then they'd look at her ! But there were walls all
round and a narrow gate behind : so she did nothing.

By and by she came to a shop at the corner of a street ;
the floor of it was on a level with her foot, and all over it
— ^piles and rolls and shining coils — there was stuff she had
never seen before, gleaming, soft, all coloured like hill-
sides in May. She stopped and stared : there was a litde
man sitting inside the shop, a brown, black-bearded man
with rings on his fmgers. He spoke — ^he spoke to her !
She shook her head, not understanding, and gave him
greeting in the Goth tongue. At once he changed his
speech and went on in words she knew. He took up a
piece of the stuff and passed it through his fingers.

' You must have strange sheep down here ! ' said
Gersemi.

' Sheep ! ' cried the httle dark man, waving his arms,
' never a sheep went near tliis ! '

Gersemi setded herself to Usten while he explained ;
she nodded ' Yes, yes,' but as to beUeving diis fine,
wonderful cloth was made by litde worms that lived on
leaves — not she !

She dismounted, looking at piece after piece ; it felt as
tender as it looked : such webs must Freya weave on her

NAOMI MITCHISON

golden loom. There were beautiful dresses, the same
stuff, but embroidered with stiff gold : she must remem-
ber she was a man. But there were coats of it too, short-
sleeved and long-sleeved, scarlet and green and blue :
oh, she had to ! But surely they were worth a queen's
ransom ! She daren't. She backed a step towards the
saddle again ; the merchant brought out still more.
After all, this could only be one town of many ; what
was its name ? — Vindobona. Not even Rome-burg,
where the great king Caesar hved ! There was one coat
she liked best of all : bright, bright red, with Httle pieces
of shining hard stuff round the neck and hem. She
picked it up.

' What will you take for this ? '

The merchant named a price, but she looked blank
at it.

' What is an aureus ? '

He fumbled in a box at the back of the booth and
showed her the funny little gold piece, not much more
than a fmger's width, with the long, narrow head looking
half scornfully down its nose on the one side, and on the
other the proud trampling Uttle man, stick in one hand,
victory in the other.

She had seen stamped gold before, but only as ear-rings
or brooches ; she had no idea what it was worth. She
took off one of her amber necklaces and held it out ; the
merchant rubbed one of the beads and peered at it.

' Another string of these and the coat is yours.'

She loosened the second necklace ; it was a big
price to pay, but the coat — oh, the coat brighter than
coral !

Suddenly there was a hand on her arm and she jumped
round, feeling for her dagger. But it was a friendly hand
and a friendly, bearded face.

' You are a stranger here ? '

89

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

She hesitated a moment, but this was a fair, blue-eyed
man, he might have the truth.

' I have never seen a v^^alled city before.'

He laughed.

' You look it ! Now, what do you want ? This ?
Very well.'

He picked up the necklace, glared at the merchant, and
began shouting abuse at him ; the poor little brown man
was bowing, trembling, flourishing his hands, appealing
to Gersemi ! But she let her new friend have his way.
In the end she got her necklace back with less than half
of the beads gone, and the silk coat as well. Oh, Gersemi
was happy !

She went on beside the man, answering his questions.

' Yes, I have come across the pass, right over from the
other side.'

' And before that ? '

' I came from the north, far and far, forests and rivers
and plains and swamps between here and there ; I've
been riding south since before the spring sowing.'

' Are you Goth ? '

' No, not Goth.'

' What, then ? '

' The gods of Asgard are my gods ; Samund Bigmouth
was my father ; I am called Gersemi.'

' You are not very old to have come so far ; you have
not even the beginnings of a beard yet.'

' No. What do they call you, friend ? '

' I am AvUf ; I am going off to the Assembly now,
with my men. Will you come ? '

'Where? What Assembly ? '

' In Illyricum, up among the hiUs. We are going to
make Alaric king.'

' Is he a great chief?'

' You've never heard of Alaric ! Come with me, and

90

NAOMI MITCHISON

you shall have fighting and gold and women and any-
thing else you choose out of the Greek cities ! Will you
be my battle firiend ? '

' Yes ! ' cried Gersemi, thinking of nothing but adven-^
tures, and they shook hands on it. Then Avilf took
off his middle-finger ring which was of silver, set cross-
wise with garnets and blue glass, and gave it to Gersemi.
She gave him in exchange one of her bracelets of soft,
twisted gold ; they looked well at one another's faces,
and they were fiiends.

AvUf had a cousin of some sort in Vindobona ; he and
Gersemi stayed in the house, and his men Hved casually
among the outbuildings. One day Gersemi was telhng
them about her riding, and of the night when she heard
the voices in the mist. Avilf and his cousin nodded at
each other, and told her how long and long ago the Goths
had journeyed from one land to another, pressed by
hunger for new homes and more sunshine, and how at a
certain river the bridge had broken under the feet of the
great host, and half of them with their horses and cattle
had been left behind ; and still they were there, man or
spirit or echo, and more than once travellers had come
on their voices at night. AvUf ended, ' That was a lucky
sign for you ; we will tell Alaric, and you shall have
honoiu: for it.' And he taught Gersemi much swordcraft
that she did not know, and she showed him the battle
strokes of the northern axe. She got herself a silk cloak
too, red like the coat, with gold cords and a heavy silver
buckle, and only used the bearskin for her bed ; it was
far too hot now, and here she felt safe enough without
the rimes.

Avilf showed her all the sights of the town, and by and
by she stopped looking surprised at everything. He
explained die church with some pride, saying, ' You
ought to be baptised.'

91

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Gersemi looked cautiously round at the bright-coloured
ikons.

' Do your gods ask it of strangers ? '

• Of course,' said Avilf cheerfuUy. ' If you are not
baptised you'll die and be burnt in hell.'

' Isn't there a sacrifice I can make instead, Avilf? '

So he began explaining all over again. But Gersemi
was still very much puzzled about everything except that
among the followers of these same gods of his some were
bad men who had been led astray by a rival godling, one
Athanasius, and some were good men and followers of
UlphUas : you could tell them because they said the Son
(and he, thought Gersemi, was Balder the Beautiful
who died and went to Hel, but will come back after
Ragnarok) was ' like the Father in such manner as the
Holy Scriptures declare.' What were the Holy Scrip-
tures ? A book of runes ? Then Avilf could read ! It
was all very wonderful, but one way and another she put
off being baptised, and then the time came for them to
start for the plains of lUyricum and the Assembly of the
Goths.

They left Vindobona and its swarming lanes behind,
their horsehoofs echoe,d under the gate arch, they were
past the crops, they were on the sandy forest road, Avilf
and Gersemi, and a hundred armed men behind them,
with slaves and pack-horses and Mght carts full of food and
wine skins. For a httle they went east, then almost due
south on the flat monotonous plain, burning in the sun,
breathless under the trees. Then eastwards again, passing
the end of a long lake, blue and level, with dried beds of
rushes stretching far out from it at every side. Still it
was flat and dull, with only a grey shadow of mountains
far away to the south ; the road led them through a low
forest, grass, crops and small huddled towns — a fort, a
market and a jumble of wooden houses inside a wall and

NAOMI MITCHISON

a ditch. By now they had begun to meet others on the
same errand, and all the talk was of Alaric, Alaric — Alaric
the Bait, the all-ruler, who feared neither Hun nor
Roman, Alaric who had fought under Theodosius in the
days when there was still an emperor worth serving,
Alaric whom they loved and trusted, Alaric the King !

Gersemi listened and wondered ; it was all so big, more
than she could understand at first. She remembered that
she had thought it a great army when her father and
Bodvar went out with the men from south of the Ford,
but this — she had seen more folk in a month than in all
her hfe before ! She had to be careful, to bathe or change
her clothes hastily and in the dark, to sleep alone if she
could ; she might not let herself be challenged to swim
or wresde, nor would she willingly go among other
women, where a sudden look, wrongly answered, might
pierce all her disguise. But anything strange she did was
put down to her being a northerner, and she was too
solid and straight-faced for any old fighter to make love
to her as a boy.

One evening at dusk they saw distant, tiny fires starring
the horizon ; the next day they rode into the great ring
of wagons and chose themselves a place. AvUf seemed
to have hundreds of friends here ; he was hardly a moment
alone, and always he and Gersemi were feasting or being
feasted. Torches and bonfires flared, men shouted and
sang, and danced in linked swaying circles, horses
whinnied, oxen bellowed, women and children screamed
across the camping grounds ; there were horns and
trumpets and a thud of drums, all the armour was polished,
all the cloaks were new and coloured, all the jewels were
flashing, the tents were scarlet and white, the wagons
were striped witli fresh paint, and either the sky was blue
at noon, or streaky orange at sunset, or at night soft
black, swarming with thousands of stars. Here, when

93

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

all had come, they held the Assembly Avith shouting and
clashing, and they Ufted high on the shield Alaric, the
yellow-haired King !

Gersemi was there with the others : why not ? She
was Avilf 's friend, so she was the friend of any Goth ;
she would fight for them, so she was one of them. Dim
and far was the Ford and the windy steading of Samund ;
long ago it was she had watched die grey waves beating
on the reef across Vig's Bay ; longer ago still when she
had walked in blue, trailing robes and given kiss for kiss
to Bodvar the Easterling. Now she was Alaric's man,
she was making ready to follow him south for a sacking
of cities and a vengeance on the emperors who had
despised him !

She found it all very simple. But it was not so simple
to Alaric and his nobles, who knew somehow that they
had the Ught and the hope now, when Rome was sinking
down into the pit she had digged, when Arcadius was
no more than a name behind Rufmus, and the child
Honorius almost less than a name behind Stilicho who
was himself a Vandal.

When they moved, they moved quickly, a long ghtter-
ing hne of shields and lances. Again Gersemi rode beside
Avilf, her scarlet coat and cloak a Htde stained perhaps,
but bright enough yet ; die bearskin and her sewn-up
pack of beads and jewels were safe in a wagon behind.
She sang songs to herself and laughed at the scattering
peasants and taught her Htde horse to do tricks like the
Goth horses. Almost at once they got into hdls, splashing
and clattering up old water-courses, stumbling and slipping
on stones and dry grass. It was up one chff and down
another to get into Thessaly, passes where they could
scarcely go two abreast, a hot, strong scent of mountain
herbs, and on the knotted wild vines the first grapes
Gersemi had ever tasted. In die middle of the mountains

94

NAOMI MITCHISON

were great fertile tablelands where they raided cattle and
horses or burst in on the middle of the harvesting ; then
up and up again and over and down, and below to the
left a blue glitter of sea. Between the waves and the cHffs
they filled the narrow strip of plain with their army ;
here they had gone cautiously, but none had barred the
way. Gersemi, riding on the sand and looking up across
the spears at the towering hillside, asked where they
were.

' Thermopylae,' said Avilf, ' a good place for an attack
if these Greeks had been men enough to face us.'

For a time they went on by the sea, and then it was
mland and climbing again, the green plain of a river, a
great bright lake and the shut gates of Thebes seen from
a mile away. But soon they came out on to a city, a
bigger dty than they had come to yet, a city Hght and
strong, and facing them ; and all that day they prepared
for the attack.

It meant nothing to Gersemi when Avilf told her, a
little awed himself even, that this was Athens. She lay
down on the bearskin and slept soundly, not afraid of
tomorrow ; but she woke a little before dawn when the
stars were paling but still bright in the west. ' There was
a cold wind, so she took the skin to wrap about her when
she got up ; she could just see the black rune marks on
the inside, and ran her finger up and down them, wonder-
ing what they meant and what the fairy bear had really
done and whether it spoke their own language to the
Finns. She went to the top of a mound so as to see the
whole city ; every moment it got clearer, till high up she
could see the outline of a great temple and a statue beside
it. She left her mound and went quietly nearer and
nearer : Athens — what did Avilf mean by saying it like
that?

There was someone moving on the walls. Very likely.

95

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Someone — tall. She rubbed her eyes ; was it this grow-
ing Ught that seemed to make tlie someone grow with it ?
Now there were two of them, a man and a woman ; and
big, and shining ! Who were they ? She called low to
Avilf, who started up and ran to her with :

' What is it ? What have you seen ? Why are you
looking like that ? '

She pointed. ' Avilf, can't you see them ? '

He shook his head.

' But can't you ? Oh, you must ! Look — straight
ahead, standing on the wall ! '

' Who ? What are they Uke ? '

She hesitated.

' I thought just now they were a man and a woman.
But they're not ; they're Gods. She — she's a Valkyr :
or more than that. Her hair's like a flame under her
helmet. She's holding a long spear, and her armour's all
gold. And there's a great snake — Oh, Avilf, she's pointing
down at us ! There. She's gone on ; she's like a statue
moving. And he — ^angry ! He's Uke a Roman soldier,
only so tall, so strong : a god, but not one of my gods.
Oh, his face ! '

Avilf was shivering too, and staring where she pointed :

' I see nothing. You must be dreaming still. They'll
go with the hght.'

' But it was with the hght they came.'

Avilf looked from Gersemi to the city, frowning :

' Athens — she'd have guardians if any city has. Oh,
I'm cold ! '

Gersemi threw half her cloak round him — she wasn't
thinking of cold now. He pulled the white bearskin
across his back, then suddenly gave a sharp cry :

' Oh, Christ, I see them too ! '

' Who are they, Avilf? '

' I don't know. Gods. Come back, Gersemi. They're

96

NAOMI MITCHISON

looking at us ! ' He pulled at her arm. " Come back, lad.
we must warn the others ! '

So back to the sleepy camp they ran, looking fearfuUy
over their shoulders at those two great figures with the
dawn now gold on their spear tips. They told the guards,
they woke die nobles, everyone crowded and whispered
and looked. Some saw at once, others only when they
touched the rune-marked bearskin. Alaric the King, he
saw. But when the sun was fully risen, that armed Athene
and that fierce and guardian Achilles were vanished into
the wind. Nevertheless, Alaric made a treaty with Athens
and there was no fighting there.

But after that they went to the Peloponnese, over the
old hiUs where fennel and wild parsley yet grew ; but
Pan fled before them. And when they came to the cUfF-
walled plain of Sparta neither Castor nor Pollux came to
stay the sacking of their city. Corinth, Argos, Sparta,
all flames, all in ruins, and everywhere the barbarian
Goths..

It was all over long ago ; the flame is less than ash, the
walls are dust, and would still be dust if all that had
never happened ; death has been over the same ground
many times since then : nobody cares. But in that
winter it was real enough : all the break;ing in of savagery
— men half-beasts again — on the old poised wonder of
Greece : terror and death, men flying and stabbed in the
back as they ran, the yells of the Goth spearmen across
the breaking walls, women and boys from gentle homes,
flowers and books and music, torn screaming away to
serve barbarian masters, and never again, not once, to see
the old peace and happiness, their old, sweet houses again.

There was seldom any standing-out against the Goths ;
few were killed and not many even wounded. AvUf
had his helmet broken in and his scalp cut by a tile thrown
ofi" a roof, but Gersemi was unhurt. She had started

(766) yrj 8

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

wearing the bearskin again when the cold days came,
and that had been a good protection ; let alone that her
mail shirt would turn most blows. She had plenty of
confidence, and she loved the rushing and yelling and all
the things they did together in a great blood-ihad crowd.
It was splendid to feel that these white god-built cities
were nothing against their strength, they, the masters of
the world ! She loved to handle the spoil afterwards,
heavy gold of the gem-set cup, bright gold topping the
ivory of the statues of goddesses, and most of all the
women's things, necklaces and ear-rings, hair-pins, brace-
lets, girdles and all the marvellous frail tissues, silk enough
to pull and trample and tear to pieces with hands and teeth
if that was the mood ! Many times the scarlet cloak had
been replaced already, and the Uttle horse had gold and
silver bells on his bridle and tassels of cut crystal plaited
into his mane.

When it was her turn for the other loot — ^the black-
haired, dark-eyed Greek maidens —she would always say
she had sworn on oath to touch mo women until she was
twenty ; and this seemed reasonable enough to the others,
who wondered sometimes to find stich a boy so fierce.
She had very Uttle fellow-feeling for these poor women,
they seemed another kind from herself, and besides — ^what
else had ever happened to women in war ? She thanked
all her gods that she herself had got away from it and was
almost the equal of a man. She could do anything else—
anything ! Oh, it was a good life.

iVhen the Bough Breaks

98

DOUGLAS YOUNG

Ice-flumes Owregie their Lades

Gangan my lane among the caulkstane alps
that glower abune the Oetztal in Tirol

I wan awa heich up amang the scalps
o snawy mountains whaur the wind blew cauld

owre the reoch scamoch and sparse jenepere,
wi soldaneUas smoort aneath the snaw,

and purpie crocus whaur the grund was clear,
rinnan tae fleur in their brief simmer thaw,

and auntran gairs o reid alproses, sweir tae blaw.

And syne I cam up til a braid ice-flume,
spelderan doun frae afFthe Wildspitz shouther,

a frozen sea, crustit wi rigid spume,
owredichtit whiles wi sherp and skinklan pouther

frae a hcht yowden -drift o snaw or hail,
clortit by avalanche debris, gaigit deep

wi oorie reoch crevasses, whaur the pale
draps o sun-heatit ice ooze doim and dreep

intil the friction-bed, whaur drumlie horrors sleep.

They say ice-flumes maim aa owregie their lades,
and corps o men win out ae day tae hcht.

Warsslan remorseless doun reluctant grades
the canny flumes hain their cauld victims ticht.

ke-ftumes, glaciers owregie, give up lades, loads caulkstane, limestone

reoch, rough scamoch, scree auntran gairs, occasional patches

. sweir, unwilling spelderan, sprawling owredichtit, wiped over

skinklan, glittering yowden-drift, down-driving storm gaigit, fissured

oorie, dank drumlie, turbidly filthy

99

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

But no for aye. Thretty or fowrty year
a corse may ligg afore his weirdit ride

and yet keep tryst. Whiles they re-appear
gey camwath-hke the wey the glaciers gUde,

whiles an intact young man confronts a crineit bride.

A Lausanne pastor wi's Greek lexicon
vanished awa amang the Diablerets,

syne eftir twenty year the Zanfleuron
owregya the baith o them til the licht o day,

still at the Greekin o't. Twa Tirolese,
faaen doun a gaig, ate what they had til eat,

scryveit their fowk at hame, and syne at ease
stertit piquet. Baith had the self-same seat

saxteen year eftir, but their game was nae complete.

In Norroway in Seeventeen Ninety Twa
frae fifty year liggin aneath the ice

a herd appeared and syne beguid tae thaw
and gaed about as souple, swack, and wyce

as when he fell ftae sicht i thon crevasse.
Sae sail it be wi Scotland. She was free,

throu aa the warld weel kent, a sonsy lass,
whill whummlet in Historie's flume. But sune we'll see

her hvan bouk back i the Ucht. Juist byde a wee.

A Braird o Thristks

torn, animated corpse weirdit, &ted gey camwath-like, exceedii^^ly distorted

heguid, began swack, strong wyce, intelligent

sonsy, well-conditioned, thriving whitt, until iowfe, bulk, body

100

SIR ALEXANDER GRAY

A Father of Socialism

Charles Fourier occupies a singular position among the
fathers of sociaHsm ; indeed, viewed from any angle, he
is a unique and enigmatical phenomenon. He was born
in Besan9on in 1772, the son of a linen-draper in reason-
ably easy circumstances. On leaving school he travelled
for a time, somewhat extensively, for various firms,
visiting Belgium, Germany and Holland. On his father's
death he inherited sufficient to enable him to start business
in Lyons. In the troubles of 1793 Lyons, revolting against
the Convention, was bombarded. Fourier narrowly
escaped being shot, and he did lose his entire fortune.
Thereafter for two years he served, an unwilling soldier,
in the army. During the remainder of his hfe nothing
happened to Fourier, not even marriage. He travelled
for various firms ; he was a clerk ; he served commerce
intermittently, but always on the lowest rung of the
ladder. On the strength of an exiguous legacy, at times
he did nothing ; and he wrote a number of extraordinary
books in ^hich he said the same things over and over
again. He floated about between modest private hotels
and furnished apartments, and in this depressing environ-
ment he died in 1837, being then sixty-five years of age.
Such is the outline. Yet two reasonably authenticated
incidents deserve mention for their influence on the
development of his mind. When a boy in his father's
shop — ^indeed at the age of five, it is said — ^he received
correction firom his father for revealing to a customer
some petty trick in the retail business ; and the infant
Fourier, realising that commerce was buUt on deceit,
swore, hke the infant Hannibal, that he would destroy
the great enemy, which in this case was commerce. He

lOI

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

complained that he was taught to tell the truth in church,
and to tell lies in his father's shop. References to this
' Hannibal oath ' occur throughout the literature of
Fourier. Later, having attained man's estate and being at
Marseilles, it was his duty to assist at dead of night in
discharging into the harbour a cargo of rice, which the
owners had allowed to spoil in expectation of a rise in
price. Fourier, observing the stealthy destruction of
what had once been food, and thinking of the hungry
men sleeping uneasily all around, realised anew the short-
comings of dvihsation and of commerce alike, and found
occasion to renew his ' Hannibal oath.' Fourier did not
succeed in destroying commerce ; on the contrary, he
spent a large part of his Ufe as one of the least of its
bondsmen. But the two legends are none the less
significant.

As to the man himself, Fourier is almost the perfect
example of furtive insignificance. Indeed he is worse
than that. His was the insignificance, the timidity, the
absurdity which inevitably provoke a smile even in
recollection. An apostle of chaotic Hberty, he neverthe-
less had a mania for orderliness, and was never happy
unless things could be docketed and arranged in series.
Even when he gained disciples, he never could be pre-
vailed upon to speak, and throughout Hfe had a great gift
of silence. Old-maidish in his habits, he had two passions,
one for cats and the other for flowers. Perhaps music
should be added as a third : he never could resist the
impulse to march behind the band. Only very moder-
ately educated in his youth, he belongs to the race of
authors who have no desire to know what others have
thought or said. Despite liis modesty, he has accordingly
no hesitation in proclaiming himself the first person for
two thousand years to illumine the world's darkness. In
a phrase which should give comfort to all, Emile Faguet

102

SIR ALEXANDER GRAY

has said of him that he lias the disadvantages of ignorance
which are great, and the advantages of ignorance which
are enormous. ' Moi seul ' and ' moi le premier ' are
recurrent motives in the writings of this unheroic com-
mercial traveller who was cast for the part of Timorous
rather than of Great-Heart. Take, as an example at
random, one resonant blast of his goose-qmll :

Moi seulj'aurai confondu vingt si^clesd'imb6cilit6 politique ;
et, c'est i moi seul que les generations presentes et futures
devront I'initiative de leur immense bonheur. Avant moi
rhiunanite a perdu plusiexirs mille ans i lutter follement contre
la nature ; moi le premier. . . .

and so on, rising to one of his few recurrent tags : ' Exegi
moniunentum aere pereimius.'

Fourier, moreover, had a childish, rather than a child-
like, faith in God and the goodness of God. Indeed, in
some respects, Fourier's ' theology,' to give it a somewhat
pretentious name, provides the foundation stone of all
his theories, and wiU require to be noticed in somewhat
greater detail presently. Lastly, and it is the point which
distinguishes him from the rest of mankind, Fourier was
blessed or cursed with a most riotous and unpruned
imagination, so unrestrained indeed that it is doubtful
how far he could have passed any of the ordinary tests of
sanity. There is nothing which his disordered imagina-
tion cannot vividly conceive, either at the foundation of
the world or in the days of Harmony yet to be realised,
and he writes it all down in the minutest detail, with the
calm assurance of a perpetual private secretary to Provi-
dence from whom nothing has been concealed. It would
perhaps be unjust to suggest that no writer, Hving or dead,
has ever produced a larger volume of outrageous nonsense
than has Fourier. A much subtler diagnosis is required.

103

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

In him the form is always much more grotesque than the
substance ; but undeniably he clothes all he has to say in
a fantasy and an imagery which are so charged with the
ludicrous that Fourier is scarcely to be read without,
intermittently, loud guffaws of uproarious and irreverent
laughter. Moreover, everything about Fourier is bizarre.
A reader not accustomed to such things may be surprised
to fmd a ' Postface ' at the end of a voltmie, or to be
confronted with an ' extroduction,' a * postienne ' or a
' citerlogue.' The diatonic scale turns up in unexpected
places ; there are strange symbols, K's, X's and Y's, now
lying on their back, now standing upside dovwi. In at
least one case {La Fausse Industrie) the pagination would
defy an army of detectives to unravel. Fourier may at
times be a hilarious farce : at times he is also an impene-
trable mystification. Let no-one, approaching Fourier,
imagine that he is taking up a voltune marked by the
decorum, the austerity and the conventionaHty of John
Stuart Mill.

Before attempting to give a more or less orderly account
of that chaos that is Charles Fourier, it may be permissible
to state briefly wherein lies his significance, and what is
his place in die unfolding of socialist doctrine. Stated
somewhat summarily, the importance of Fourier Hes in
the fact that, like Saint-Simon, he is a link, and a very
interesting link, between the eighteenth and the nineteenth
centuries. They are indeed very different links, though
they have this in common, that these two fathers of
sociaHsm are not in essence particularly socialistic ; they
are disfigured by strangely conservative features which
do not appear in the child. They both cling to property ;
they are alike devotees of inequality. The essence of
Fourier is that, as he looked round the world, he saw that
everything was wrong, not merely a few things here and
there, but the whole scheme of things. It was in a sense

104

SIB ALEXANDER GRAY

civilisation itself that was wrong — civilisation with all its
attendant conventions and consequences. In this respect
he is an echo, perhaps a caricaturing echo, of that greater
voice from die eighteenth century, of Jean Jacques
Rousseau, who also found that somehow the human race
had taken the wrong turning. And if both found that
our civilisation was a poor thing, a whited sepulchre,
there is this to be said for the insignificant Fourier, as
against his mightier predecessor, that he was at least
constructive. Rousseau is after all little more than a wail
of despair, an ineflfective wringing of hands. But Fourier
knew, with the utmost precision and definiteness he knew,
what he wanted and what had to be done, and how in
short the world could be put right in the brief space of
two years. It is only necessary to abandon Morality,
that evil legacy of civilisation, and to Hsten to our natural
impulses, and we should straightway overcome all the
trickery, the deceits, the hypocrisy, the divided interests,
the parasitism which is what civilisation is. We shall in
feet have estabhshed Harmony, and Harmony is the
co-operation of men who sing at their work. Nothing
could be simpler. It only requires a capitaHst, and not
even a very big one, to give the thing a start, and the rest
is as easy as falling oiF a house.

in a sense Fourier's religion provides the starting-point
of all his observations and of all his criticisms. It per-
vades all his thoughts, and it will constantly recur in
almost every paragraph of this chapter ; for this reason
it may be as well to seek at the outset the dominant
idhs m^res of Fourier on this subject. The old truth that
man created God in his own image, that ' thou thoughtest
I was altogether such an one as thyself,' is nowhere more
startUngly illustrated than in the case of Fourier. That
God is good, that God has done well in all that he has

105

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

done, that he has done nothing without a meaning and a
purpose, sum up in general terms the essence of Fourier's
religion ; but with the acute logic of a somewhat un-
balanced mind, he pushes this body of doctrine to con-
clusions which are much less orthodox than are usually
drawn from these premises. He is severe on those who
' half beUeve ' in God. Belief in the goodness of God
implies behef in the goodness of all that God has done ;
it is therefore inconsistent with a belief that a good God
could make man with evil impulses and passions against
which men have to wage incessant war. This, which is
the line of the moraHst and the theologian, is to establish
war between God and man ; indeed it is to set God at
war with himself We should seek for the laws of God
in the impulses that come from God ; he foresaw, for
example, that we should wish to eat three times a day.
Those who write facetiously about la galanterie et la
gourmandise are ignorant of the importance which God
attaches to our pleasures ; for it is by ' Attraction ' — by
pleasure — ^and not by constraint, that God governs the
universe. It is thus that he governs planets and insects ;
it is thus that he intended to govern Man.

Moreover, in creating this unhappy world of ours, God
was not engaged, as Bums would have put it, in trying
out his ' prentice hand.' He has created milliards of
globes before ours, and has thus acquired vast experience
pendant I'Eternite passie. Elsewhere, even more patron-
isingly, he explains that God has had ample time to learn
by experience in creating men in milliards of other worlds.
In short, he knew what he was doing when he made
men as they are ; and instead of correcting the work of
God we should endeavour to find out how he meant
his works to be used.

And, primarily, God's intentions were that we should
enjoy ourselves. Not only so, it would be an insult to

io6

SIR ALEXANDER GRAY

God to expect him to provide merely mediocre pleasures.
To ask merely for our daily bread — le miserable pain, says
Fourier, who never could abide bread — ^is to misconceive
the magnanimity of God. In a phrase which comes with
a certain shock by reason of its reversal of Christian ideas,
' Dieu nous doit beaucoup, puisqu'il peut beaucoup ' ; he
owes us infinite happiness in this life and in the life to
come. It is God who is our debtor. He hath made us,
and not we ourselves ; in fact (though Fourier does not
stress the point) we were not consulted. He gave us a
yearning for happiness ; and as (by defmition) his power
is infinite, he owes us happiness pressed down and run-
ning over, a perpetual and unconditional pouring out of
a blessing from the windows of heaven, so that there
shall not be room enough to receive it.

Fourier, as has been hinted above, presents his criticisms
of life and his social theories in a fantastic and indeed
grotesque firamework. It would be easy, by appropriate
selections, to present him as a figure of farce and low
comedy ; but it would probably be equally wrong, again
by appropriately different selections, to present him as a
.sober-minded and austere critic, adding his ponderous
brick of thought to the construction of the socialist edifice.
Many writers in their references to Fourier give the
reader no hint, or but the merest hint, that Fourier was
most emphatically not as other men : indeed in some
respects he is a imique phenomenon in the world's litera-
ture. This designedly tactful drawing of a veil over
Fourier's peculiarities is mistaken, if only because it gives
a wrong and one-sided view of the man he was. After
all, there is nothing to be ashamed of in being sHghdy
deranged. For all we know, it may be the condition of
the bulk of humanity : it all depends on the standards we
choose to apply. But in the case of Fourier, there is this
fiirther most decisive reason against suppressing any

107

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

acknowledgment of his eccentricities that his sanity and
his apparent deviations from normal sanity are strangely
intermingled. Indeed his whole criticism of civihsation
to a certain extent postulates as a background his fantastic
cosmogony and his views regarding the stages through
which humanity must pass.

With this semi-apology for an apparent departure from
accustomed austerity, we may endeavour to illustrate some
of the more unexpected ideas which may surprise a
reader embarking, unwarned, upon the turbulent waters
of Fourier. Most intimately interwoven with the essence
of his thought are his theories regarding the Cosmos.
This world has been granted a life of 80,000 years ; there
are 40,000 of ascending vibrations and 40,000 of descending
vibrations. The arithmetic may seem weak, since there
is also a period of 8,000 years of complete happiness, the
Apogee du Bonheur. Doubtless this minor discrepancy is
covered by Fourier's general reservation that everything
he says is subject to an exception of an eighth or a ninth.
In all there are thirty-two periods, sixteen in the upward
and sixteen in the downward ladder. We are at present
in the fifth of the first eight stages, having passed through
what Fourier calls the Sectes Confuses, Sauvagerie, Patriar-
chal and Barbaric. Ahead of us Hes Garantisme, a stage
in which hvmian rights will be effectively guaranteed to
us ; at times, however, it is rather suggested that we may
by-pass Garantisme. These eight stages take up 5,000
years, and we shall then find ourselves in Harmony —
indeed more and more delirious grades of Harmony, for
35,000 years. Thereafter for 8,000 years we shall have
that lofty tableland of perfect bUss, after which the world
will go downhill again through precisely the same stages
in the inverse order ; and at tihe end, if any of us are left,
we shall be transported to another planet.

It is when we approach Harmony that things will begin
108

SIK ALEXANDER GRAY

to hum. A Northern Crown (after the manner of Saturn's
rings) will encircle the Pole, shedding a beneficent
aromatic dew on the earth. The sea will cease to be
briny, and, greatest of dehghts, will be transformed into
lemonade, for which unsatisfying beverage Fourier seems
to have had a marked partiality. Six moons of a new
and superior quality will replace our present inefficient
satellite. A new race of animals will emerge. In place
of the hon, there will be the anti-lion, all that a lion is not,
docile and serviceable ; there will be anti-wolves and
anti-bears, and a whole race of really nice beasts. If things
are only taken in hand at once, telescoping various stages,
the anti-bug may be looked for in 1829, along with the
anti-rat. This is indeed good news for le beau Paris,
si richement meuble de punaises, of which incidentally
there are forty-two varieties. Our argosies, knitting land
to land, will be drawn by anti-whales. After these
marvels, it is perhaps rather a disappointment to know
that we shall then live only 144 years, of which, however,
120 will be spent in the active exercise of love.

It is perhaps a corollary to this Hvely interest in the
history of the globe that Fourier is also so much concerned
with the stars and the planets, which in so many ways
influence our Hves now and hereafter. The stars and
planets are animated beings like ourselves, only perhaps
more so. They also have their passions, and from their
passions spring other stars and planets, but also plants
and animals. The planets seem to be androgynous, like
plants self-contained for purposes of reproduction ; but
they also have intercourse with other planets. Unless
Fourier is more confused than usual, the Aurora Borealis
merely betokens that the Earth is holding out lonely
hands of love to Venus. Fourier tabulates at considerable
length the various animals and plants we owe to Jupiter,
the Sun, Venus and so on. The death of Phoebe (other-

109

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

wise known as the Moon) plays a large part in this
astronomical fantasy. Phoebe, whom he rather rudely
calls a cadavre hlafard, died of a putrid fever, contracted
from the Earth fifty years before the Flood : it was
indeed the death of Phoebe that caused the Flood. The
absence of her contribution to the last creation caused
some strange omissions in the animals and plants we ought
to have had. In particular, the world has been the poorer
by the absence of a very special gooseberry, of which it
was robbed by the untimely decease of Phoebe. The
discriminating reader will have begun to discern dimly
how the anti-hon and the anti-bug are to be generated :
another creation, under more favourable conditions and
therefore consisting predominantly of good beasts, is
pending, and wUl mark the transition to Harmony.

Fourier's concern for human happiness is not limited
to what happens in this transitory life. He beUeves not
merely in immortahty ; he believes also in metem-
psychosis. We shall return again and again, and keep on
returning ; and that is one reason why we should be so
intensely interested in whait is going to happen. It is
important that this should be a world worth returning to.
On all this, Fourier is as extensively and as exactly in-
formed as he is regarding the death of Phoebe. He knows
exacdy how long we shall be away, when and how we
shall return. He knows how what we do now influences
the Uves of those waiting to come back, and again it is
all told with a wealth of ludicrous detail which may not
be so exciting as his account of the passionate drama of
the love affairs of the planets, but is equally fxill of
information which, as the reviewers say, is not readily
available elsewhere.

Enough perhaps of the fantastic side of Fourier ; yet
perhaps so much is necessary, firsdy because these
extravagances may not be dismissed as idle weeds that

no

SIK ALEXANDER GRAY

grow in the sustaining corn ; they are, as has been
suggested above, an integral part of Fourier ; and
secondly, because it is as well that the reader should know
in advance that there are moments of wild surprise in the
perusal of our author.

The Socialist Tradition

III

ALEXANDER SCOTT

The Gowk in Lear

It wasna the King, it wasna Heich-Degree

That sang foment the levin —
Reivit o micht and dwyned in majestie,

He hurled a challance at heaven.

Nor Fairheid sang at the drumlie yett o death

Whar shade and sunlicht grapple —
Deep in a dungeon's dark she tint her breath,

A raip aroun her thrapple.

And Lealtie happit his truth in a ragment o lees,

A babble o Bedlamish blether —
Wud as the wind he skirled at the levin's bleeze.

His tongue gane wersh as the weather.

Nane o them, Lealtie, Fairheid, Heich-Degree,
Cud sing whan the thunder duntit —

Wae had stown their sangs frae aa the three.
And dule had left them runtit.

For wha cud sing whan the Uft was a fiery lowe
Whar muin and starns were burnan ? —

Nane but a Gowk wi naething but dreams in's pow
Cud mak at a time o mumin.

Nane but a Gowk wi nae mair wits nor a burd

Cud sing lik the marlit mavis —
Whit man that's wyce sae luves the livan word

As sing i the howe whar the grave is ?

foment, against levin, lightning Reivit, robbed Fairheid, beauty

drumlie, shadowy wersh, bitter runtit, cleaned out lift, sky

lowe, flame marlit, speckled wyce, sane

112

ALEXANDER SCOTT

Nane but a Gowk cud sing whan the warld was hell
And Christ dung doun bi the Deevil —

Nane but a Gowk ower glaikit tae fash for himsel
Cud lauch i the lour o evil.

Nane but a Gowk cud sing — whan wyce men's sangs

Were stown, and saunts were quaet —
The weird o the warld, sae wyvit o richts and wrangs

That nane but a Gowk cud spey it.

The Latest in Elegies
glaikit, daft weird, fate wyvit, woven

(768)

113

NEIL M GUNN

Up from the Sea

The boy's eyes opened in wonder at the quantity of sea-
tangle, at the breadth of the swath which curved with the
curving beach on either hand. The tide was at low ebb
and the sea quiet except for a restless seeking among the
dark boulders. But though it was the sea after a storm
it was still sullen and inclined to smooth and lick itself,
like a black dog bent over its paws ; as many black dogs
as there were boulders ; black sea-animals, their heads
bent and hidden, hcking their paws in the dying evening
light down by the secret water's edge. When he stepped
on the ware, it slithered under him like a Hving hide.
He was fascinated by the brown tangled bed, the eel-like
forms, the gauzy webs. There had been no sun to congeal
what was still glistening and fresh.

A faint excitement touched his breast, his Ups parted,
his eyes shot hither and thither. He began rooting at the
bed with his boots, stooping every now and again to
examine the head of a tangle. At length he found one
with a smaU delicate Umpet stuck in the cup of its head ;
a young one because its round stem was slim and not two
feet in length. As he snicked it free its leathery tail-
frond flicked sea-mist to his face. His teeth began to
water. He cut the brown stem two inches from the shell
with his pocket-knife, which had one strong sharp blade.
As he pared off the claw-roots that curled round the
hollow where the shell was, he was very careful not to
remove the shell. The sheU was the jewel in its head,
importing tenderness and sweetness. It was also some-
thing to ' show off.' He put the tangle head in his pocket
and lifted the folded sack that had shpped from under
his arm. Then he went on rooting amongst the bed

114

NEIL M GUNN

until he had found two more tangles with shells. But
neither was so delicate, so thin skinned, as the first. The
first was a beauty ! When he had dressed them and
stuffed them in his pocket, he gave an involuntary shiver ;
his teeth chcked and he brought the back of his hand to
his wet nose. His nose was colder than his hand. His
body twisted and wriggled inside his clothes searching for
warmth. But his round dark eyes were on the boulders
down by the hidden sea-edge. It was time he got his
' baiting.'

Below the high-tidal sweep of tangleweed the beach
sloped in clean grey-blue stones rounded and smooth,
some no bigger than his fist, but some larger than his head.
As he stepped on them they slithered and rolled with a
sea noise. The noise rose up and roared upon the dusk
like a wave. All around no life was to be seen, there was
no movement but the sea's. It was too lonely a place to
make a noise. He was reHeved to come on firmer ground
where the boulders began. He went out amongst the
boulders quietly until he came to the mussel bed. Then
he folded back the bag and squatted down, and began
tearing the clusters of mussels from the ground.

Sometimes stones stuck to the roots, but these he caught
and tore off easily. Many of the mussels were very small,
and a small mussel made an insufficient bait. Big fat
mussels were what were needed. It took the same labour
to shell a big mussel, as a small one. Indeed it was easier,
because the two sides of the small mussel were so close-
shut and delicate that the knife-blade would not go in
between them, and so was inclined to slip and cut the
ball of the thumb. It was very vexing to cut a thumb
when working in salt water. Besides, the salt water was
great for making the cut keep on bleeding. And then,
as everyone said, it was a difficult thing to get an open
wound to heal readily m cold or wintry weather.

"5

tttfi THlStLfi ANt) tHB PEN

» . . His hands were now bitterly cold. He could not
feel his fingers. There was a drip of water to his nose
which he brushed slowly away with the back of his hand,
at the same time pressing the hand hard against his nose
as though to warm the point, pressmg it harder still, till
his whole body quivered widi the sustamed eiFort to
draw heat from inside him. But no heat came, and as he
straightened himself his teeth chittered. Then he began
smartly slapping his arms across his breast, as his father
did and the other fishermen. But the chp of his finger-
tips against the curves of his back was painful.

He kept up the manly exercise for a little to satisfy
appearances, but he knew he wasn't really lettmg his hands
slap properly. It was too sore. The cold had now chilled
them to the bone and the fingers were growing painful.
He put them under his blue jersey and knuckled them
against his stomach. He drew them forth again, closed
them into squirming fists, cupped and blew on them,
pressed them against each other. In a sudden frenzy he
began slapping them round his sides again, but now in
real earnest, not caring for the pain.

Gradually the heat began to come. The tingling of it
grew. The arrowy stabbing in the numbed fingers
became unbearable. They began to bum in agony. He
looked at the reddened swollen tips, holding them claw-
upwards in an utterly helpless gesmre. His body v^nrithed
and httle dry sobbing sounds came from his throat.

But he would not cry. He only pretended to cry in
order to ease the anguish. He could have cried readily
enough. His body twisted and doubled up, but he daren't
touch anything with his fingers now. Something inside
was trying to force its way through them. The tingling
flesh was swollen and wouldn't let the thing pass. Then
suddenly the pain reached a point from which it had to
recede or he would have cried.

ii6

NEIL M GUNN

With the throb of the pain dying down, the relief was
exquisite. He even pressed the thumbs hard against the
finger-tips to make the pain sting a little, as though he
were catching it up and hurting it before it sUpped away
altogether. Now his hands were in a glow. He felt
exhilarated. From his pocket he drew forth the young
tender tangle, and scraping the transparent skin off its end
with white even teeth, he bit on it exactly as a dog bites
on a bone. The tangle was not so hard as a bone, but
very nearly. SaHva flowed into his mouth, and with
wet red lips and sharp teeth he sucked and gnawed,
moving the tangle-end this way and that until his stretched
mouth ached in the effort to give the crunching molars
a real chance. But the bit he broke off was sweet and
tender to his palate, and its salty flavour excited a greater
flow of spittle than ever, so that his mouth moved richly
and he swallowed many times. A tangle was always a
litde disappointing in the first minute, as though the
memory of it contained more food. But once you
started gnawing you could not stop.

With a fmal look at the shredded end, he stowed the
tangle in his pocket. If he didn't hurry it would soon be
dark. And his father would be waiting for the bait.
And, anyway, he would pick up another young tangle
with a shell on his way back. He would keep it whole
to show off, because the other boys were playing football.
He himself liked playing football better than anything.
First of all he had said to his mother that he wouldn't go
to die ebb. The mood had come on him to be dour and
stubborn. It was a shame that he should have to go to
the ebb, with the other boys playing football. The in-
justice of it had hit him strongly. His father had said
nothing. But if he didn't go then his father would have
had to. And by two or three in the morning his father
would have to be aboard. It must be terribly cold in the

117

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

dark out on that sea ; out on that sea in the small hours
of a sleety morning, or on a morning of hard frost, with
a grey haar coming off the water like ghosts' breath.

The loneliness of the bouldered beach suddenly caught
him in an odd way. A small shiver went over his back.
The dark undulating water rose from him to a horizon
so {Jai away that it was vague and lost. What a size it
was ! It could heave up and drown the whole world.
Its waters would go rushing and drovsming. He ghmpsed
the rushing waters as a turbulent whiteness released out
of thunderous sluices. ' But you can't,' he half-smiled,
a httle fearfully, glancing about him. A short distance
away, right on the sea's edge, he saw one of the boulders
move. His heart came into his throat. Yet half his mind
knew that it could only be some other lonely human in
the ebb. And presently he saw the back bob up for a
moment again.

Yes, it was a man. Seeking among the boulders there
like some queer animal ! He looked about him carefiilly.
There was no-one else. There were just the two of them
in the ebb. Here they were on this dark beach, with
nobody else. A strange air of remoteness touched him.
It was as though they shared this gloomy shore, beyond
the world's rim, between them. There was a secret
importance in it. He stooped and began filling his bag
with mussels, picking big ones in a manly way. The
water was now merely cool to his burning hands. He
worked with great energy, a red sea-anemone stopping
him for less than a minute. This one had feelers out that
quiedy retracted to his touch. Whereupon he squeezed
the red jelly with a knack that sent a little spirt of water
out of it. As he swished some bloated weed away below
the red anemone, he disclosed, however, a pocket of dulse.
This had the unexpectedness of a pleasant find. He had
quite forgotten about dulse. He ate some of the tender

ii8

NEIL M GUNN

fronds, and shaking the water from the rest of the bunch,
stowed it in his pocket on top of the tangles until his
pocket bulged and overflowed.

When he thought he had gathered sufficient mussels,
he stood up and tested the weight of the bag. Then he
said he would gather twenty more to make sure. He
gathered twenty-five and then three more for luck, and
then made it thirty, adding one after that to make dead
certain.

As he came erect, the man who was also gathering
mussels in die ebb straightened himself and put his hand
m the small of his back. His back curved inward. So it
was Sandy Sutherland. Swinging his bag on to a boulder,
the boy got under his burden and started off towards
Sandy, but yet slanting away from him to make his
approach not too deliberate.

Is it yourself, Hugh, that's in it ? ' The note of surprise
in Sandy's voice was pleasant and warm. His face was
whiskered, his ways quiet, his eyes dark-shining and kind.

' Yes,' said Hugh, pausing, and tinghng a litde with shy
pleasure.

' Getting your father's baiting, I see.'

[ Yes.'_

' Aren't you cold ? '

' Oh no.'

' Well, you're plucky,' said Sandy. ' And it's your
father that's lucky. Here I have to be down myself.'
He said this with no grudge in his voice. It was half a
joke. ' And my back has got the cramp in it, sure as
death.' Though he was over sixty, his whiskers were
black with a very white hair here and there. He took
out his pipe. ' Was your father at the line when you
left ? '

' Yes. He had just cleaned it.'

' It would be fair stinkmg, I suppose ? '
119

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

' Yes, the bait was rotten. You could smell it all over
the house,' said Hugh, smiling, a faint flush on his fece.

' I'm sure,' nodded Sandy. ' It's hard enough work
baiting the line. And then to have to take all the bait
off again without using it is — is enough to try the
patience.'

' It is that,' said Hugh. ' It's been a big storm.'

' It was blowing as hard the night before last as it blew
this winter. Indeed there was one gust that woke me up
I thought the roof was going.'

' The roof of Dan Ross's bam was torn off, and a screw
of Totaig's hay was blown into the burn.'

' So I heard. Totaig wouldn't be pleased at that ! '

' I could see him spreading it out yonder all day.'

' Yes ! ' Hugh gave a small laugh. Totaig was cross
in the grain and mean. Sandy gave a chuckle also.

' Well, rU be coming with you, if you wait till I gather
one or two more. What sort of baiting have you
yourself? '

' Oh, I think I have plenty.' Hugh dropped his bag on
a boulder and caught Sandy's eyes measuring the quantity
in a secret glance.

' Perhaps you have, then.'

' Oh, I think so,' murmured Hugh. .

But there was a faint reserve in Sandy's voice, as though
he didn't like to suggest that the boy might not have
gathered a full baiting.

It was a deUcate point. Hugh saw that if Sandy could
find a hidden or oflT-hand way of adding a few, he would
do so.

' Perhaps you have, then,' Sandy repeated. ' Though
you could gather one or two more for luck if you like
while I'm fmishing off. It would save you tomorrow
night maybe.'

120

NEIL M 6UNN

' Father isn't wanting a full baiting,' Hugh explained
' There's not much short of half one at home.'

' Oh, that makes a difference ! To gather more would
be waste. Indeed, I'm diinking you have a full baiting
there as it is, if not more.' The voice was amused rather
than reUeved. But Hugh understood perfectly.

' I think there's plenty,' he considered, as if now a trifle
doubtful.

' Plenty ? I should say so ! Do you think I have as
many as you myself? " He measured both bags with an
eye. ' I should say nearly.'

' You have more, I think,' judged Hugh politely.

' Well, if you say so. But remember it's you I'll blame
if I'm short ! It's a cold place this, anyway.' He Ht his
pipe, sending great clouds of blue smoke about his head.
' We'll chance it. So let us be going.' He shouldered
his bag cheerfully and they both set off.

Besides the sea's breath, there was no wind, and the
only, sound was the wash among the boulders, with a
deeper note from the rocks beyond the beach where
the quietening water swayed sullenly in a murmurous
boom-oom.

The Ught was now more than half gone, and the figures
of the man and the boy, bent a Uttle under their burdens,
gathered as it seemed all the eyes of the place upon them
as they walked away. Heads stooping forward, backs
shghtly arched, dark stumbling figures, moving up from
the sea. Sparks of fire suddenly came from the old man's
head. Each spark shone distinct and round, sprightly and
mocking, gleaming wayward moments of an intenser
Hfe. The defeated water choked among the boulders.
Through a rocky fissure a lean tongue thrust a hissing
tip — that curled back on itself in cold froth.

They won clear of the weeded boulders. They
approached the foreshore. Their fists gripped across

121

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

their breasts upon the ends of their sacks. The twist of

canvas bit into their shoulders, bit the boy's neck, as they

stumbled up tlie slope of grey-blue stones. The stones

rumbled and roared, carrying each foot back to tlie sea.

But foot went before foot, and soon they were on the

high-tidal bed of weed. Treacherously it shthered under

them, and when the boy stumbled the man cried to him

to take care. Soon they were over that, first their legs

disappearing beyond the crest of the beach, then their

bodies, and fmally their heads. An eddy of darkness like

a defeated wind swirled in among the boulders. There

was nothing left for the watching eyes to see beyond that

crest but the first pale stars in heaven.

Morning Tide

The Little Red Cow

The red cow had come back to the gate and now let out
a prolonged broken bellow at their backs, ending with a
choking gust.

' Gode, she'll roar her guts out,' said the ploughman,
taking his haunch from the wall, and turning round.

The cattleman laughed. ' For the size of her, she fair
beats the band ! '

' I think she hurt her throat that time,' said the shepherd
interestedly.

They all looked at her. She was small, a shaggy dark-
red, and getting on in years, but her brown eyes were
deeply glittering, youthful, full of wild mad fixes. A tuft
of hair on her brow let drop a few coarse strands over the
left eyebrow, giving her a ferocious look. One could
fancy that what was troubling her might drive her insane.

' What do you think is really wrong with her ? ' asked
the ploughman.

122

NEIL M GUNN

' She's just Strange,' said the cattleman. ' She's finding
everything strange. That's all.'

' I think she's hurt herself,' said the shepherd, watching
her.

' Not she ! ' said the cattleman.

The red cow opened her mouth and bellowed lustily
five times in succession. They thought she was never
going to stop, and even the shepherd, who was a quiet
man, laughed.

' No, her throat seems all right,' he said.

' What do you think is wTrong with her, Donul ? ' asked
the cattleman. ' You should know, seeing you come from
the same coimtry.'

' Och, she'll just be finding herself strange,' answered
Donul, looking over the dyke at the cow, and smiling
in an awkward grown-up way, pretending he hadn't seen
the cattleman's wink.

' Gode, she doesn't beUeve in keeping her breath to cool
her porridge,' said the ploughman.

This gusty humour made them feel friendly to one
another, and for tlae moment almost tender to the little
red cow.

' She's for the butcher, I suppose ? ' said the shepherd.

' Where else ? ' answered the cattleman. ' Did you
think she was for Kinrossie's prize herd ? '

' You never know,' said the shepherd dryly. Regarding
Donul with his considering eyes, he added : ' You
wouldn't care for a trip out to the Argentine with her,
would you, Donul ? '

' I might do worse,' said Donul.

They were drawing the lees from the fun of this new
thought when the red cow bellowed until the steading
echoed. ' Aw, shut up ! ' said the ploughman. Stooping,
he picked up a muddy stone and threw it at the cow. It
hit her in the flank and she turned her wild eyes on them,

123

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

but did not move. ' Man, ye're dour ! ' said the plough-
man. ' Get off ! Whish ! Get out ! ' But though he
raised his arms in a threatening jerk, the cow did not
move. ' Ye for a stupid bitch,' said the ploughman,
summing her up without heat as he rubbed his fingers
against his hip.

' She does look dour, does she not ? ' said the cattleman.
' They're like that, them that come firom the West.'

' It's in the breed,' said the shepherd, not thinking of
Donul. ' Actually they're mild and gentle brutes, though
they look wild.'

' I've known them very treacherous,' said the cattleman.

' Ay, but only when they've young calves following
them,' answered the shepherd.

They discussed this until the bellowing distress of the
brute forcibly claimed their attention again. ' Put the
dog at her,' said the ploughman.

' Here, Toss ! ' called the catdeman. The old collie
with the grey mouth got up from the dry spot by the
cart-shed door and came across. ' Hits ! Drive her off !
Get into her ! ' The dog leapt on to the wall, saw the
bellowing beast, and knew what he had to do. As he
barked, the cow swung her head, but he easily avoided it,
and in a very short time had her careering madly before
him. When he thought he had driven her far enough,
he stopped, without any shout from his master, and came
slowly back.

' He's a wise old brute, that,' said the shepherd. They
straightened themselves, and the shepherd said he must be
getting home. The others went along towards the farm
cottages for their food. Their day's work was over and
they had enjoyed the talk by the wall.

In the darkening, Donul slipped away from the bothy
where he lived with three other men, wearied of the look

124

NEIt M GUNN

of their bodies and the sound of their talk. The red cow
was still bellowing, but now with longer intervals between
each outbreak. The other beasts in the field paid no
attention to her, had paid no attention from the be-
ginning. They were of a group that had travelled
together for tomorrow's sale. The little red cow was all
alone.

Donul knew quite well why she bellowed, knew it as
though she were kin to him and were moved by the same
emotions. She was of the breed of Old Hector's cow
and of their own. He could see her moving about her
home croft, tethered here, enclosed there, or herded by
someone like Art or Neonain. A girl like Morag had
milked her, after first clapping her, then speaking to her,
and fmally helping her to let down her milk by humming
an old Gaelic air. The crofter who owned her had
probably decided to sell in a hurry, because the young
cow was coming up, and the problem of wintering was
difficult. Or perhaps he was of the kind who thought he
would get a better price by taking a chance in the market,'
for it was being said that Mr Nicolson was making a pile
of money by not giving anything like the right price for
the cattle he bought on the spot. And certainly, to
Donul's knowledge, he had made a large profit off the
beasts they had brought from Clachdrum. But it was
another matter to call the man ' a robber.'

Or was it ? The irruption of the bellowing red cow
into his new difficult Hfe had disturbed him deeply, had
irritated him, and at times during the day had maddened
him. In a moment of involuntary listening, he had heard
the sound of her in the distance give out a curious echo, as
though the field were encompassed by high prison walls.
Actually he had had to turn and look at her to dissipate
the fancy, and when he did, there she went, padding the
ground, restless, wandering, seeking a way out.

125

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Now in the deep dusk falling into night, the fantasy
came back upon him ; the prison walls grew higher and
darker than ever, and echoed the sound into a distance
remote and forlorn and terrible. The only way he could
bear this was by shutting his heart in anger against the
cow. He knew what the beast was shouting for. He
knew only too well, damn her. He knew all right. Shut
up ! Oh, shut up !

Then a thought came to him. If he opened the gate
and quietly drove her out, she would go straight home.
He felt this with perfect certainty. She would go down
glens and cross rivers and swim lochs and cHmb mountain
ranges, day and night. That she had come part of the
way by train made no difference. Certain beasts had the
instinct that found the way home from any place. Men
had told him of dogs and cattle that had done it, and even
sheep. This beast was one of that kind. HenowreaUzed
for the first time the nature of the instinct itself. It stirred
in his own breast. He stopped, turned half round, and
knew with a profound irmer conviction that he was
facing direcdy home. He sniffed die air and got the faint
but distinct home smell of peat. Nostalgia went crinkling
over his skin in a shiver. He had a swift blinding dislike
of the catdeman and the other strange people. In a bitter
spite he decided it would serve them right if he let the cow
out. He was full of spite. He spat. And suddenly in an
involuntary but clear vision, he saw the cow nearing
home, stumbling a Httle on her weak legs because she
was now in such a hurry, mooing softly through her
nostrils, her wide eyes shining, a slaver at her mouth.

His body was trembling, his forehead cold. Those on
die croft did not want the cow back. They needed the
money. Dismay stood in their staring faces.

The httle red cow bellowed far over on the other side
of the field. Beyond the dark wall the sound went into

126

NEIL M GUNN

the night, into regions of fear and terror. The primeval
forces of fear and terror lurked and convoluted there,
formless but imminent, and the little red cow went baymg
them like a beast of sacrifice.

Donul turned and made back for the bothy, holding
himself with all his strength against running, his chest
choked, his legs trembling. At the gable-end he paused,
took off his bonnet, and wiped his forehead and his damp
hair. He faced the horrific black formlessness as long as
he could ; then he went into the bothy.

In the morning he was sent into the field to round the
cattle up and take them to the market in the county
town. It was a very busy day, for the farmer had many
beasts of his own for sale in another field. The cattleman
was shouting. The dogs were barking. As Donul drew
near the red cow, the brute looked at him with her
shining eyes, her head lowered, waiting, dumb. And
intense anger swept over Donul. ' What way was yon
to behave, you bloody fool 1 ' he said harshly and drew
his stick with all his force across her buttocks. He was
ashamed of her, the fool that she was, and tried to hit her
again ; but with a sudden snorting, a queer sound, not
of pain, she started running, like a cow in heat, towards
the gate. ' Canny with them ! ' shouted the cattleman
as he opened the gate and let them through. Donul
controlled the dark emotion that assailed him, by grippmg
his stick hard and not looking at the cattleman.

He had great difficulty driving the red cow along the
main street. The other beasts grouped together and let
vehicles past, but the little red cow hadn't even the sense
to get out of the way. With splayed forelegs and head
down, she waited. Once when DoniJ gave her a re-
sounding whack, a fur-clad townswoman winced, her
face suggesting that surely there was no need for such

127

THE THISTLE A1»D THE *EN

brutality — beasts were best handled by kindness. The
cow went up a side lane and knocked over an empty
perambulator and a message-boy's bicycle with a full load
of groceries. Out of this pandemonium, after a final
savage ' Shut up ! ' to the message-boy, Donul got her
back to the main street. She went into a shop. The rest
of the beasts had meantime overshot the right-hand turn
to the auction mart.

By the time he had them penned, Donul was blown
and red in the face.

As the sale proceeded, the cattleman and others he
knew came round the ring. The incident of the cow in
the shop provided a subject for amusing talk under the
high urgent voice of the auctioneer.

' Did she offer to buy anything, Donul ? '

' No, man,' said Donul, trying to make a joke of the
question by taking it seriously, but his srmle was awkward,
his face congested.

' Leave you Donul alone.'

' I'm not caring whether I'm left alone or not,' replied
Donul.

They laughed, throwing a wink or two, and as one
man mimicked his voice, his heart went black. But he
did not walk away from them, and presently they
scattered, each to get his own lot into the ring. ' I'll
leave the red cow to you,' called the cattleman.

He heard them laugh as they went and knew they were
laughing at him.

What should he do now ? The cattle were being sold
a few at a time. He saw dealers marking their catalogues.
Was the red cow a ' lot ' in herself, or what ? He went
out and began to ask one of the mart men how he would
know when die red cow was due to appear. The man
gave him an abrupt look, shouted at someone, and hurried
off. They were very busy. Donul decided he would go

128

NEIL M GONN

and wait by the pen, where he was astonished to find the
red cow now all alone. She mooed at him, her eyes
shining, a slaver at her mouth. But the moo was one of
distrust, though in it, too, there was an incredible some-
thing that spoke to his flesh and bones. The half-pedigree
heavy stock were new to him, with a certain strange
indifference about them, and he was not dismayed by
this ; but the crofter's cow was intimate to him as his
inner self.

After a discreet glance aroimd, he spoke to her. ' Ah,
you fool, what was the sense in behaving like yon, with
everyone looking at you ? ' He spoke to her in Gaelic,
and she answered him at once through her nostrils, her
mouth shut. The sound of understanding, of longing,
gave his heart a turn. ' Be quiet ! ' he ordered, turning
his back on her.

He leaned against the wooden rail of the pen, his
elbows resting on it. Men came and emptied pen after
pen, with shouts, and the whacking of sticks on hides.
He felt the red cow's head between his shoulders, pushing
him. ' What the devil are you up to ? ' he demanded in
EngUsh as he swung round.

Time passed. He suddenly saw the cattleman and two
others at the other entrance to the mart. The cattleman
raised his stick, pointing Donul out, and they laughed.
A great voice roared ' Hurry up, there ! ' from the near
entrance.

' Are you wanting her now ? ' called Donul.

' What the hell ! '

Swiftly Donul opened the gate of the pen, but now
the httle red cow was dour and would not move. ' Get
out ! ' yelled Donul, pushing her fiercely.

' Damn it, do you think we can wait for you all day ? '
bellowed the man at his back. But the little red cow took
an astonishing amount of punishment from the man
(766) - 129 1"

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

before she went along the passage-way, hit into the open
gateway of the ring, and had to be shoved bodily through
it, followed by Donul.

' She's not so tough as she looks, gentlemen,' cried the
gentlemanly auctioneer. There was a laugh. ' Well,
who'll start me at ten pounds ? . . . eight ? . . . seven ?
Come along, gentlemen. Well cared for, plump crofter's
cow.' He made a gesture to Donul, ' Show her round.'

Donul tried to get her to move, but she had her fore-
legs splayed again and her head lowered. By sheer force
he heaved her hindquarters round three inches, but that
was all. He felt red and hot ; sweat broke out on his
forehead. He became intently conscious of the tiers of
faces surrounding him under the roof of the mart. The
sting of the watching faces maddened him as he struggled
in the ring with the htde red cow. There was a tittering
laugh from one comer. He knew that laugh. Soft
snorts broke out here and there from the amphitheatre.

Smiling, the auctioneer swung round, lifted a glass of
water from the clerk's table behind him and drank in a
gentlemanly way. He generally had to provide his own
humour, and humour at any time was a godsend ; it
hghtened the proceedings and brought bids more readily.

Donul lost his head. ' My curse on you, get round ! '
The Gaehc words tore harshly through his straining
muscles and produced at once a general laugh. The
unexpected Gaehc fitted the scene so precisely ! Donul
drew back and hit the little red cow a wild wallop with
his stick. His fierce earnestness was something to behold.
Push and hit, push and hit, but she would not be ordered
about. No fear ! The audience chuckled. They knew
her type. One of the ring men entered and, with impor-
tant impatience, shouldered Donul backward. In a
blinding flash of anger Donul half svrang his stick with
the intention of knocking out the brains of die ring man,

130

NEIL M GUNN

but recovered in an awkward stagger. This byplay of
emotion was not lost on the audience, and when the little
red cow held her own against the ring man they felt that
the score was even. Then the ring man caught her tail,
but the auctioneer, in his Olympian way, raised his hand.
' I think,' he said, ' you can all see her, and she's good
stuff ! Who'll bid me seven pounds ? . . . six ? . . .
Five pounds, thank you, five pounds I am bid, I am bid
five pounds, five — ^five guineas — I am bid five guineas,
ten, five-ten, thank you, I am bid five-ten . . .' At six
pounds the auctioneer took half-crowns, and at six pounds
five shillings the little red cow was knocked down to the
local butcher who had a small farm. ' Will you take her
in the same pen, Mr Grant ? ' asked the auctioneer
pohtely, leaning fiom his dais. The butcher nodded.
' Pen sixty-nine,' called the auctioneer. The clerk made
an entry in his ledger. The iron swivel was swung back
with a clack, the gate opened, and Donul exerted his
force. In a half-blind staggering run the Uttle red cow
charged from the arena, Donul on her heels — a. dramatic
exit that left a grin on the air.

' God, don't you know how to handle a beast yet ? '
shouted a mart man at him when at last the gate of pen 69
was shut. As the man hurried away Donul gripped the
top of the rail until his hands were white. Emotion was
swirling in his head, black drowning whirls of it, but he
held against it, until up through it came his blind will,
his voice, cursing them, cursing them all. Curse them,
but I'll hold my ground ! shouted his thought with
such intense bitterness that-his eyes suddenly stung. From
deep down in her the litde red cow mooed.

Young An and Old Hector

131

ERIC LINKLATER

Rumbelow

Said Rumbelow : I sail the sea

With three-and-thirty wishes.
And if the Lord is good to me
Mayhap He'll grant the nether Three

Before I feed the fishes.

I WANT to see the Southern Isles

And brown girls, naked, dancing there

With moon-white blossom in their hair.

I want to see the River Nile

Slide like a fat green snake between

The dusty pyramids, and dream

Of Israel sweating there —

How unctuously the Hebrews sweat !

I've seen black Jews of Cochin drip

Like mussucks full of running jet. . . .

Indian beaches ! I must ship
Aboard an Indiaman again
For Mangalore and Calicut,

And Eastward yet, where tropic rain

Falls Uke a cataract to shut

The green-and-opal world away

Behind a curtain of glass-grey.

Green parrots in the trees — I want

To ride upon an elephant

Down sombre paths through silent teak.

Echo-less, wet, and endless aisles

Where only parrots speak.

1 want to see gnarled crocodiles
Slumbrous and scaly in the mud ;

I want the jewel in a Moghul's ear,
132

ERIC LINKLATER

A ruby red as the spirjring blood
Of a stumbling, sword-stuck mutineer ;
Pretty grass-green emerauds ;
And whiter pearls than a shark's belly
Turning in the Indian sea —
Nay, but not for vanity.
Not for simple pride, I tell 'ee,
Covet I such dainty gauds. . . .
But once I saw

A Ranee and her women walk,
Laughing, into a lotos-pool.
They were more beautiful
Than thought or memory can draw.
As fair as moonlight ! When they did talk
It seemed small birds flashed to and fro,
And they were lithe and dehcate.
With little pouting breasts, backs straight,
And eyebrows like a taut thin bow.
Bright beetle-black ; and they alone
Of all the women I have known
Were perfect — well, a perfect stone
Might buy perfection ; for pearls
Out of their stinking oysters peer.
Like Nature's unoffending bawds.
To argue prettily with girls
And stop a wife's uneasy fear. . . .
Lord, but how quickly angry dust
Whirls like a desert storm to lust !
Salt water breeds this lechery.
But I have simple wishes, too.
For innocenter things to do —
I want to kill before I die,
Two Frenchmen and three Portuguese,
A Hollander, and after these
The man who slept with Susie Pye
133

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

A year ago come Lady Day,
An Isle of Pines mulatto^/b/i !
Such appetites in women grow,
To lie with black men, and in Lent !
But we're not bom to find content
In homeward things, and we must go
About the waste of waters tiD
Our timbers settle
On tidal mud or Noah's hill,
Where there's leave to rest or play
For a season or a day ;
Then it's up again and haul.
Head to sea and next land-fall,
Ararat will vanish fast.
Look on it and look your last,
We're for Popocatapetl. .
About the waste of waters, Lord,
With this unruly crew aboard
Of wishes wilful as a boy
And hunger huge as Horse of Troy !
But here are sober wishes, three
That live together quietly :
I want to read the Bible through,
From Earth's begirming in the Void
To Jesus flowering out of Jew
And Babylon destroyed.
I want to buy a Cashmere shawl
That Mother may be comforted.
Who nearly perished, so she said,
Ofcold last Fall.
1 want to find a girl who's true.
And I to be as true as she —
There are three. Lord, let me win,
Bible, Shawl, and Constancy,
And Constancy a twin !
134

ERIC LINKLATEH

So Rumbelow went back to sea

Counting up his wishes.
The Thirty came to hand or knee,

Rumbelow ! Rumbelow !
But ere he got the nether Three
The greenest wave of all the sea,

Rumbelow !
Came aboard for him and he

Went to feed the fishes.

A Dragon Laughed

135

IVOR BROWN

Good Words

Braxy '

Braxy is a strange and ugly matter, splenetic apoplexy in
sheep. So braxy mutton is the flesh of sheep that have
fallen dead and then, less accurately, of sheep that have
been killed by accident. So the hungry shepherd might
not always despise a bit of ' braxy,' and in war-time, on^
the hUls where there were no restaurants or canteens and
only the pressure of keen air upon hard-working hungry
bodies, there were sometimes, I fancy, more sheep that
had accidents than might have been expected from the
peace-time figures. Much of this war-time braxy would
be good feeding, coveted and well earned. I was re-
minded of braxy by coming across some lines, still well
known in a phrase or two, but rarely remembered in
full. Written in 1901, they referred to the vast possessions
of the Marquis of Breadalbane.

From Kenmore

To Ben Mohr
The land is a' the Markiss's ;

The mossy howes.

The heathery knowes.
An' ilka bonnie park is his.

The bearded goats,

The toozie stots,
An' a' the braxy carcases ;

Ilk crofter's rent.

Ilk tinkler's tent.
An' ilka collie's bark is his ;

The muir-cock's craw.

The piper's blaw,
136

IVOR BROWN

The gillie's hard day's wark is his ;

From Kenmore

To Ben Mohr
The warld is a' the Markiss's !

The author was James Mactavish of Waterside, Doune, a
renowned breeder of black-faced sheep. He and his
father were tenants of Waterside for close on a century.
Toozie is tousy or tousled, a nice, curly sort of word.
A toozy lass is often to be seen beside a tinkler's tent.
The Scottish tinklers, a type of native gipsies, are now
often called tinkers. The brief ' tink ' does for both forms.
Stots are not, as the rhyme suggests, stoats. They are
usually steers and sometimes heifers.

Say the Word

Cateran

The Highland cateran, an aptly sounding word for the
tough yokel, is the same as the Irish and Shakespearean
kern or kerne. This latter marches across our stages and
dramatic texts in frequent association with a gallow-glass,
the couple sharing a line not only o£ Macbeth but of
Henry VI, Part II. Shakespeare has a particularly lively
set of epithets for kerns. They are crafty and they skip :
they are uncivil, shag-haired and rug-headed. The double
allusion to the towsled curls of a cateran or kern suggests
the spectacle of Irish prisoners brought to London or that
journey to Scotland which some believe Shakespeare
must have made. (Some of his craft and period certainly
made ' a stroll of players ' as far as Aberdeen.) Both
cateran and gallow-glass are Gaelic words. The former
comes from Caithairne, meaning peasantry. Its applica-
tion to the roving cattle thief came later. Rob Roy and
his men lowered the once unblemished name of cateran.
Indeed I was reminded of the cateran by reacquaintance
with Baihe Nicol Jarvie, who said of Rob :

137

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

And then he's sic an auld-farran lang-headed chield
as never took up the trade o' cateran in our time ;
mony a daft reik he has played — mair than wad fill a
book, and a queer ane it woidd be — as gude as Robin
Hood, or William Wallace — a' fu' o' venturesome
deeds and escapes, sic as folks tell ower at a winter-ingle
in the daft days.

Presumably Caithness is Caithaime-ness, the headland of
the caterans — in the original and reputable sense of the
word. But I shall be reminded of the Catti or Clan
Chattan and refuse to be embroiled in this argument.

Just Another Word

Claret

Not a striking word, yet obviously it has its appeal.
Why otherwise should it have usurped, as far as Britain
is concerned, the red wines of Bordeaux ? It signifies
dear wine, but claret is not markedly clear. The victory
is an odd one. Dr Johnson's absurdly crude view that
claret is a wine for boys, with port allotted to men, was
never shared in Scotland. I like the lines of Allan Ramsay
after he has surveyed the snow on ' Pentland's tow'ring
tap ' and called for the ' tappit hen,' which is a Scots
vessel with top or crest holding about three quarts.

Good Claret best keeps out the Cauld
And rives away the Winter soon,

It makes a Man baith gash and bauld,
And heaves his Saul beyond the Moon.

This proper attribution to claret of brave, spirit-hfting
and translunar powers preceded Johnson's nonsense in
time and answered it before it was spoken.
Gash is sagacious. A man with a long chin the Scots
138

IVOR BROWN

used to call ' gash gabbet.' I must remember that when
next I have the pleasure of reviewing a Jack Hulbert
show. Has Hulbert ever, when delighting Glasgow or
Edinburgh, found himself described as gash gabbet in
the Glasgow Herald or The Scotsman ? Probably not.
Scots joumaHsts are proud of their English (justly) and
their readers have mainly ceased to understand Scots. 1
read that gash has now become a naval term for anything
free or ' scrounged.'

But we are wandering from the pleasures of claret, a
term adjectively appUed by Herrick to the cheeks of a
charmer. Most of die clarets we drank of late (and hope
to drink again) are not of a colour with which ladies
would Hke to be much imbued. Andrew Young, on the
other hand, writes of the ' claret-coloured birches ' when
describing a Highland glen in winter. He thus gives
support to my previous contention that wine-dark, seem-
ingly wrong for the Aegean seas on whose surface Greek
epic spavraied it, will do very weU for the bloom coming
off our native woods in winter. I certainly know combes,
denes and bottoms in the English shires where a vapour,
hanging over the leafless twigs upon a sun-shot winter
afternoon, is fairly to be described in terms of the
Bordeaux vintages. The sight of it is so exquisite as to
heave one's soul, if not beyond the moon, at least slighdy
over one's shoulders.

It is queer that the British should caU two such impor-
tant wines as Bordeaux and Rhenish by names strange to
the growers. Claret was a word used in EHzabeth's
England. It occurs once in Shakespeare, if you permit
Henry VI, Part II to be Shakespeare's own. Jack Cade,
when enjoying his brief triumph in rebellion, proclaims
claret now to be everyman's tipple, though he puts it
more grossly. Hock began to edge its way in early in
the foUowing century. Hamlet speaks of Rhenish, and

139

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Shakespeare uses the term several times. The victory of
Hock is surprising ; it is an abbreviation of Hockamore,
an AngUcisation of Hochheimer. Hochheim is on the
Main, not the Rhine. But it was important enough to
give a general name in England to the Rhine wines as
well as to its own.

/ Give You My Word

Daze

It is right that the North should have the best terms for
cold. The South has lost the use of daze for nimib,
narrowing its usage to strong effects on eye and brain,
just as it has Hmited ' starve ' to matters of appetite. The
Yorkshire child who, when settled in an air-raid shelter
of the dank and draughty kind, cried out to his mother,
' Ee Moom, ba goom, ma boom is noom,' might have
called his posterior dazed had he hved a Uttle earher. In
Scotland the use of daze does, I beHeve, linger. How
well it sits in Gavin Douglas's sharp, clear and tingling
description of a Scottish winter.

In this congealit season sharp and dull,

The caller air penetrative and pure.

Dazing the blude in every creature,

Made seek warm stovis and bene fyris hot.

In double garment cled and wyliecoat,

With michty drink, and meatis confortive. . . .

The last robust and reassuring word surely amplifies and
justifies my earlier note on the original implication of
confort or comforts.

A Word in Your Ear

Geek, Girn and Gowl

The fate of James Hogg's 'Bonnie Kilmeny ' does not
greatly stir me. Hogg, whether being fey or Jacobite,

140

IVOR BROWN

seems to me to have had less gumption than is to be
expected in Ettrick Shepherds. However, he had the
vocabulary of his time and place, and it is a good one.
The singer of Bimiebouzle and Balmaquhapple was
certain to have a Ungo with the Border wind in it and
the smeU of neeps after rain. (Surely that exquisite aroma
is essential Scotland : it has the sharp tang of so many
Scottish things, of whisky especially, and smoked fish, of
pine- woods and peat.)

Hogg in the aforesaid ' Bonnie Kilmeny ' has one
passage containing the three words geek, gim and gowl,
which makes a sombre and striking trinity.

He gowled at the carle and chased him away
To feed with the deer on the mountain gray.
He gowled at the carle and he gecked at Heaven.

Previously the carle had ' girned amain.'

If a carle (or churl) girned amain at me I should
certainly deem it fair to geek and gowl, as well as girn,
back at him. Taking them in order, geek, either as a
verb for ' to mock ' or as a noun for a person mocked, is
by no means Scottish only. Cries MalvoUo,

Why have you suffered me to be- imprisoned.
Kept in a dark house, visited by the priest,
And made the most notorious geek and gull
That e'er invention played on ?

The phrase ' geek and scorn ' also appears in Cymbeline.
Gim is supposed to be a mistaken form of grin. It
means to show the teeth at, snarl and generally grizzle
and rail. Gowl is more vociferous and is a picturesque
form of howl. One might put it this way : if you
unfairly geek a fellow-creature, he first gims at you and
then, if nothing happens, gowls.

/ Give You My Word
141

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Meteor

Colonel Walter Elliot, writing an article with a title
drawn from Thomas Campbell's phrase ' The meteor
flag of England,' once pointed out that England is still
regarded as a terrible and consuming force by some Scots
and Welsh, as well as by many others farther off; he
also reminded us, incidentally, that Campbell could flash
into poetry as well as perform Uke an apt rhetonaan in
the more beUigerent types of verse. Meteors splutter and
blaze across the skies of art as well as of reahty, but
Campbell's success was in making meteor an adjective.

The meteor flag of England
Shall yet terrific bum,
Till danger's troubled night depart
And the star of peace return.

The second couplet is ordinary enough, but the first
does powerfully strike a hght. The idea of the Enghsh
or British flag as a fire-ball which creates hght and heat
wherever it goes has the strength of fancy proper to
genuine poetry. The EngUsh, as Walter Elhot insisted,
have long come to regard themselves as lambs, meek and
sparkless, but the outer world, or at least a good deal of it,
still imagines British power to be a flambeau, incendiary
bomb or even an engine of rocketing conspiracy. (At
the time Elhot wrote a prominent American paper was
encouraging its readers to believe that the dastardly
scheme of Rhodes Scholarships was a vile plot to capture,
convert and Anglicise decent, but innocent, young
Americans.) That is the mood which sees the Union
Jack to be as much a thing of fiery menace as any
' exhalations whizzing in the air.' Campbell was some-
times inspired. His ode on the ' Pleasures of Hope ' fell
not so far behind Gray in quotabihty :

142

IVOB BROWN

Hope for a season bade the world farewell.
And Freedom shrieked — as Kosciusko fell 1

It was Campbell, not Gray, who noted,

'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view
And robes the mountain in its azure hue.

The second line sUd away, typically, for Campbell was
not a stayer. His poetry came with a meteor flash. And
when he fell, how deep the plunge 1

One moment may with bliss repay
Unnumbered hours of pain,

So far, so decently obvious ; but there followed.

Such was the throb and mutual sob
Of the knight embracing Jane.

Here, indeed, was a meteor absurdity.

I Give You My Word

Tosy

Tosy and cosh both mean snug and are very happily used
by John Gait in his Annals of the Parish. His Rev.
Mr Balwhidder complains of me tea drinking that has
come unto Ayrshire (1762), but reminds himself that it
does less harm than the ' Conek ' (cognac) with which
previous beverages had been laced.

There is no meeting now in the summer evenings, as 1
remember often happened in my younger days, with
decent ladies coming home with red faces, tosy and
cosh, from a posset-masking.

143

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Could there be better adjectives to suggest a modest
alcoholic after-glow ? One thinks of the ' decent ladies '
very affable with the minister, and then reduced to
tittering and even to less than decent conversation when
Mr Balwhidder had passed by.

Cosh, by the way, was the name of one of John Aubrey's
sources of information. That glorious gossip, after relat-
ing some neat or scandalous episode, would note, ' This I
had of old Major Cosh.' The Major suggests one of the
ripest of the seventeenth-century talkers. He was doubt-
less almost always tosy.

A Word in Your Bar

Usky

The Gaels' Uisge Beatha (water of life), is familiar to us
by the rather mean name of whisky. It first became
usquebaugh and by 1770 the Enghsh were calling it (and
calling for it) by the word we now know. But, for a
while, in the early eighteenth century, when Wade's men
were exploring and road-building in the Highlands, the
term hovered in an intermediate stage as usky, a stage
which has its own suitabUity and attraction. Usky was
the spelling used, for example, by Edmund Burt, an
officer of engineers who wrote letters from the North of
Scotland about 1730, explaining the deeds and pleasures
of the natives. They give, he said, to their children of
six or seven years as much usky at a nip as would fill a
wine-glass. Evidently this strengthened young heads and
stomachs for the serious drinking of later years. When
some of Burt's fellow-officers audaciously entered upon
an usky-drinking match with the locals, die Highlanders
were easy victors and left the field without loss, whereas
the Enghsh casualties were severe. Here is Burt's
chronicle of the ruin. ' One of the officers was thrown
into a fit of gout, without hopes ; another had a most

144

IVOR BROWN

dangerous fever ; a third lost his skin and hair by the
surfeit.' The fourth competitor went ' yellow ' in the
slangy modern sense. ' When drunkenness ran high, he
took several opportunities to sham it,' and so, pre-
sumably, preserved his looks, locks and hide.

It seems to have been a good party on the whole. One
has heard of curious effects produced by a carouse, but
a case of simultaneous depilation and depellation is new
to me, and should stand high among the cautionary tales
for the reckless practitioners of absorbency. The standard
of consumption in the Highlands, as Burt saw them, was
imposing. ' Some of the Highland gentlemen,' observed
this Gael-watcher, not denying them the title of gentry,
' are immoderate drinkers of usky, even three or four
quarts at a sitting.' Burt himself was an anti-usky man,
believing that ' this spirit has in it, by infusion, the seeds of
anger, revenge, and murder (this, I confess is a little too
poetical), but those who driiik of it to any degree of
excess behave, for the most part, like barbarians, I think
much beyond the effect of any other Hquor.' Life in ' the
lone shieling of the misty island ' was not, in those days,
dry. The collector of customs at Stornoway told Burt
that ' one hundred and twenty famihes drink yearly
4,000 English gallons of this spirit and brandy together,
although many of them are so poor that they camiot
afford to pay for much of either, which, you know, must
increase the quantity drunk by the rest.' Burt did not,
however, clinch his argument by relating the statistics
of murder to those of usky gallons drunk. It seems a
little odd that uisge beatha, the spirit of Ufe, should have
been the name for a fluid so lethal. In any case, for the
kind of skin-destroying, hair-uprooting tipple that Burt
describes, usky seems to be an apter, because a rougher,
name than whisky.

There were other spellings. A Scottish gentleman, who
(766) 145 u

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

visited the Highlands in 1737, was so delighted by the
work of Wade, Burt and their men in the civilising of
the country that he made his obeisance in a poem of a
thousand lines.

And thee, O Wade, shall coming ages bless
Whose prudent care did give the scheme success.

At one of the banquets of celebration, given after the
building of another Highland bridge, the poet says that
the workers

Then beef and pudding plentifully eat
With store of cheering husque to their meat.

He also alludes to the ' Houses of Intertainment ' set up
for the travellers.

With corn and grass, enclosures all around.
Where fitt supplys, for men and horse, are found.
There various meats and liquors too are got,
But usqueba must never be forgot.

Those travelling over Wade's roads in 1944, as I had the
pleasure of doing, or at least over part of them, were not
so lucky -with their meats and hquors. Certainly usqueba
was not forgot ; but, no less certainly, it was never as
much in the glass as it was in the mind.

/ Give You My Word

Venust

1 have never thought that the Latin word Venus, whether
pronounced in the English manner or as Waynoose, was
musically adequate to its subject. Yet the old adjective
' venust,' used by the Scots makars, has always pleased me.
How did they pronounce it ? ' Venoust,' I suppose, in

146

IVOR BROWN

which case it becomes a pretty addition to the language of
love. The Latinism of the Scots poets of the latter part of
the sixteenth century, so magnificent in the use of their
native words, is sometimes oppressive. Is ' The Day
Estivall,' as Hume caUed it, preferable to ' The Summer
Day ' ? But when a lover woos his tender babe venust,
one immediately accepts her as adorable and regrets that
the Enghsh dictionaries now pass the word by. Alexander
Scott's use of it occurs in the lovely as well as aUiterative
verse :

My bird, my bonnie ane,
My tender babe venust,

My luve, my life alane,
My liking and my lust.

Certainly this poem is a frank one, but not heavily so.
The word lust, now possessing an ugly as well as an
adipose tissue, has put on weight with the years, and to
Scott was far closer to the German notion of a lustig or
merry state of mind.

A Word in Your Ear

147

MAURICE LINDSAY

I The Man-in-the-Mune

The Man-in-the-Mune's got cleik-i-the-back,
an wullna come oot tae play.
He sits by himsel on a shimmer o Heaven,
an hears whit the starnies say.

But his cheeks gae black, he purls his broo,
an his auld heid shaks wi rage
thru the reengan cloods that jostle the yirth,
whan God's on the rampage !

cleik-i-the-back, rheumatism shimmer, cioss-bai

2 Willie Wabster

Hae ye seen Willie Wabster,

Willie Wabster, Willie Wabster ?

He's weil-kennt frae Scrabster
tae yont the siller Tweed.

He scarts his fingers owre the lift,

an sets the starns a-shoggin :
when thunner-cloods'U haurdly drift,

he gies ilk yin a joggin.

An when the mune offends his sicht,
he coosts it owre his shouther ;

an whiles, tae snuff the sun's gowd Ucht,
his winds begin tae fluther.

scarts, scratches fluther, flutter to and fro
148

MAURICE LINDSAY

He gars come dingan on the toun
the raindraps oot o Heaven,

draps firae his pooch an dangles doun
in bauns, the colours seven.

Sma wunner that I'm aften scared,
for I'm no certain whether

he's God Himsel, the warld's ae laird,
or jist His clerk-o-weather !

3 Burn Music

' MuRMELL, murmeU, murmell,'

croodles the burn
as heid owre heels

its watters turn,
puan the blue-gerss

that hings frae the shair,
an sheinan the stanes

o its clear cobbl't flair.

' Brattle, brattle, brattle,'

the wee lynn sings
as tumblan frae craigs

the bum taks wings ;
a fantice o faem,

it loups at the air,
an streams hk the mane

o a white kelpie-mare.

loups, leaps

kelpie, a malignant water-sprite haunting rivers in the form of a horse

149

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

' Spitter, spitter, spitter,'

the drin-draps plash,
ruiiklan the quate pool

wi gay mountain gash.
' Pwudle, pwudle,'

the deep pool breathes
as oot tae the river

it humphs an heaves.

From ' A Suite of Baimsai^,'
At the Wood's Edge
quate, quiet gash, chatter

I50

ED WIN MUIR

In Orkney

My mother lived much more in the past than my father,
so that when I was a child Deemess became a hvely place
to me, while Sanday remained blank except for its
witches, since the tales my father told me were mainly
about the supernatural. One of my mother's stories has
stuck in my memory. The family had moved from Haco
to SkaiU, a farm on the edge of a sandy bay, beside the
parish church and the churchyard. She was eighteen at
the time. The rest of the family had gone up to the Free
Kirk, two miles away, for an evening prayer meeting,
a great revival having swept the islands. It was a wild
night of wind and sleet, and she was sitting in the kitchen
reading, when the door opened and ten tall men, dripping
with water, came in and sat round the fire. They spoke
to her, but she could not tell what they were saying.
She sat on in a corner, dumb with terror, until the family
came back two hours later. The men were Danes, and
their ship had split on a rock at the end of the bay.

Both her memory and my father's were filled with
wrecks, for the Orkney coast is dangerous, and at that
time there were few Ughthouses. When the wrecks were
washed ashore the people in the parish gathered and took
their pick. Stories were told of men luring ships on to
the rocks by leading, along a steep road, a pony with a
green light tied to one side and a red Ught to the other.
It was said, too, that ministers sometimes prayed for a
wreck in bad times. A strange tale often told in our
family is indirectly connected with all this. One bright
mootJight night my father and my cousin Sutherland
were standing at the end of the house at the Folly after
feeding the cattle, when they saw a great three-masted

151

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

vessel making straight for the shore. They watched in
amazement for a few minutes — there was only a field
between them and it — until it melted into a black mist on
the water. I was enchanted by the story when I heard it,
but as I grew older I naturally began to doubt it. Then
when I was seventeen or eighteen I was speaking to a
farmer who had lived on the neighbouring farm of the
Bams, and he told me the very same story. He had been
at the end of his house that night, and he too had seen the
three-master standing in for the shore and then dis-
appearing. At the time he was amazed at its behaviour,
like my father and my cousin Sutherland, for in the bright
moonlight the cHffs must have been clearly visible from
the ship ; but they all accepted it, I think, as a magical
occurrence.

My father's stories were drawn mostly from an earlier
age, and I think must have been handed on to him by his
own father. They went back to the Napoleonic wars,
the press-gang, and the keelhauling, which stiU left a
memory of terror in Orkney. But in his own time he
had known several witches, who had ' taken the profit of
the corn,' turned the milk sour and wrecked ships by
raising storms. Many of these stories I have heard since
in other versions, and these obviously come from the
store of legends that gathered when witch-burning was
common in Scotland. In one a Sanday farmer, coming
back for his dinner, saw the local vidtch's black cat slinking
out of his house. He rushed in, snatched up his gun, and
let fly at it. The cat was leaping over a stone dyke when
he fired ; it stumbled and gave a great screech, then ran
away, dragging one hind leg after it. Next day the
witch sent for the doctor to set her leg. My father told
this story so well that I could see the farmer with the
smoking gun in his hands, and the black cat stumbling
over the grey stone wall and running away widi a twisted,

152

EDWIN MUIB

crab-like glide. When my father told his witch stories
we sat up very late ; we were afraid to go to bed.

The Devil himself, as Auld Nick, sometimes came into
these tales, and generally in the same way. A farmer
would be in the bam threshing his corn with a flail, when
he would notice another flail keeping time with him, and
looking up would see an enormous, naked, coal-black
man with a fine upcurling tail standing opposite him.
He fainted at this point, and when he awoke all the com
in the bam would be neatly threshed. But these visits
were always followed by bad luck.

My father had also a great number of stories about
The Book of Black Arts. This book could be bought only
for a silver coin, and sold only for a smaller silver coin.
It ended in the possession of a foolish servant girl who
paid a threepenny-piece for it. It was very valuable, for
it gave you all sorts of worldly power ; but it had the
drawback that if you could not sell it to someone before
you died you were damned. The servant girl of my
fether's story tried every means to get rid of it. She tore
it to pieces and buried it, tied a stone to it and flung it
into die sea, burned it ; but after all this it was still at the
bottom of her chest when she went to look there. What
happened in the end I can't remember ; I fancy the poor
girl went oflTher head. I always thought of the book as
a great, black, hasped, leather-bound volume somewhat
like a family Bible.

My father also knew the horseman's word — that is, the
word which will make a horse do anything you desire if
you whisper it into its ear. Some time ago I asked Eric
Linklater, who knows Orkney now better than I do, if
he had ever heard of the horseman's word up there. He
said no, but he told me that when he was a student at
Aberdeen University young ploughmen in Buchan were
willing to pay anything from ten shiUings to a pound out

153

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

of theix small wages to be told the horseman's word.
From what my father said I imagine that the word was a
shocking one.

The Orkney I was bom into was a place where there
was no great distinction between the ordinary and the
fabulous ; the hves of hving men turned into legend. A
man I knew once sailed out La a boat to look for a
mermaid, and claimed afterwards that he had talked with
her. Fantastic feats of strength were commonly reported.
Fairies, or ' fairicks,' as they were called, were encoimtered
dancing on the sands on moonHght nights. From people's
talk they were small, graceful creatures about the size of
leprechauns, but pretty, not grotesque. There was no
harm in them. AU these things have vanished from
Orkney in the last forty years under the pressure of
comptjsory education.

My father left the Folly for a farm called the Bu m the
island of Wyre. There were seven other farms on the
island, with names which went back to the Viking times :
Russness, Onziebist, Helzigartha, Caivit, Testaquoy,
Habreck, the Haa. The Bu was the biggest farm on the
island, and close beside a Utde green knoll called the
Castle. In the eleventh century this had been the strong-
hold of a Viking freebooter called Kolbein Hruga, or
Cubby Roo, but we did not know this at the time, nor
did any of our neighbours : all that remained was the
name and the knoll and a little cairn of big stones.
Between the house and the knoU there was a damp green
meadow which waved with wild cotton in summer.
Then came the dry smooth slope of the Castle, and on
the top the round cairn of square grey stones, as high as a
man's shoulder and easy for us to chmb. My younger
sister and I would sit there for hours in die summer
evenings, looking across the sound at the dark hilly
island of Rousay, which also had its casde, a brand-new

154

EDWIN MUIR

one like a polished black-and-white dice, where a retired
General lived : our landlord. He was a stylish, very httle
man with a dapper walk, and the story went that because
of his size he had been the first to pass through the breach
in the wall of Lucknow when that town was reUeved
during the Indian Mutiny. He came over to Wyre every
spring to shoot the wild birds. I remember one soft
spring day when the hght seemed to be opening up the
world after the dark winter ; I must have been five at
the time, for it was before I went to school. I was
standing at the end of the house ; I think I had just
recovered from some illness, and everything looked clean
and new. The General was walking through the field
below our house in his httle brown jacket with the brown
leather tabs on the shoulders, his neat httle knickerbockers
and elegant little brown boots ; a feather curled on his
hat, and his httle pointed beard seemed to curl too. Now
and then he raised his silver gun, the white smoke curled
upward, birds fell, suddenly heavy after seeming so Ught ;
our cattle, who were grazing in the field, rushed away in
alarm at the noise, then stopped and looked round in
wonder at the strange little man. It was a mere picture ;
I did not feel angry with the General or sorry for the
birds ; I was entranced with the bright gun, the white
smoke and particularly with the soft brown tabs of
leather on the shoulders of his jacket. My mother was
standing at the end of the house with me ; the General
came over and spoke to her, then, calling me to him, gave
me a sixpence. My father appeared from somewhere,
but replied very distantly to the General's affable words.
He was a bad landlord, and in a few years drove my
father out of the farm by his exactions.

Between our house and the school there was a small
roofless chapel which had once been the chapel of the
Castle. In summer it was a jungle of nettles and rank

155

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

weeds, which on hot days gave out a burning smell that
scorched my nostrils. At the school, which stood on a
sHght rising, a new group of more distant islands appeared,
some of them brown, some green with Hght sandy
patches. Not a tree anywhere. There were only two
things that rose from these low rounded islands : a high
top-heavy castle in Shapinsay, standing by itself with the
insane look of tall narrow houses in flat wide landscapes,
and in Egilsay a black chapel with a round pointed
tower, where St Magnus had been murdered in the
twelfth century. It was the most beautiful thing within
sight, and it rose every day against the sky until it seemed
to become a sign in the fable of our Uves.

We had two fiddles in the house and a melodeon.
My two eldest brothers played the fiddle, and we were
all expert on the melodeon. John Ritch, our neighbour
at the Haa, was a great fiddler in the traditional country
style, and he had a trick of making the bow dirl on the
strings which delighted us, especially in slow, ceremonious
airs such as the Hen's March to the Midden. Then one year
we were all caught with a passion for draughts, and
played one another endlessly through the long winter
evenings, always wary when we met Sutherland, for he
had a trick of unobtrusively replacing his men on the
board in impregnable positions after they had been
captured. If we pointed this out to him he would either
deny it loudly or else show amazement at seeing them
there. When I think of our winters at the Bu they turn
into one long winter evening round the stove — ^it was a
black iron stove with scrollwork on the sides, standing
well out into the kitchen — playing draughts, or hstening
to the fiddle or the melodeon, or sitting still while my
father told of his witches and fairicks. The winter
gathered us into one room as it gathered the cattle into

136

EDWIN MUIK

the Stable and the byre ; the sky came closer ; the lamps
were lit at three or four in the afternoon, and then the
great evening lay before us like a world : an evening
fiUed with talk, stories, games, music and lampUght.

The passing from this solid winter world into spring
was wild, and it took place on the day when the cattle
were unchained from their stalls in the six months'
darkness of the byre, and my father or Sutherland flung
open the byre door and leaped aside. The cattle shot
through the opening, blind after half a year's night,
maddened by the spring air and the sunshine, and did
not stop until they were brought up by the stone dyke at
the other end of the field. If anyone had come in their
way they would have trampled over him without seeing
him. Our dog Prince, who kept a strict watch over them
during the summer, shrank before the sight. That was
how spring began.

There were other things connected with it, such as the
lambing ; I think our lambs must have been born late in
the season. I have a dim picture of my mother taking
me by the hand one green spring day and leading me to
the yard at the back of the house to see two new-born
lambs. Some bloody, wet, rag-Hke stuff was lying on
the grass, and a httle distance away the two lambs were
sprawling, with their spindly legs doubled up. Every-
thing looked soft and new — the sky, the sea, the grass,
the two lambs, which seemed to have been cast up
without warning on the turf ; their eyes still had a bruised
look, and their hoofs were freshly lacquered. They paid
no attention to me when I went up to pat them, but kept
turning their heads with sudden gentle movements which
belonged to some other place.

Another stage in the spring was the sowing. About
that time of the year the world opened, the sky grew
higher, the sea deeper as the summer colours, blue and

157

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

green and purple, woke in it. The black fields glistened,
and a row of meal-coloured sacks, bursting fiill like the
haunches of plough-horses, ran down each one ; two
neat Uttle lugs, like pricked ears, stuck up from each sack.
They were opened ; my father filled from the first of
them a canvas tray strapped round his middle, and strode
along the field casting the dusty grain on either side with
regular sweeps, his hands opening and shutting. When
the grain was finished he stopped at another sack and
went on again. I would sit watching him, my eyes
caught now and then by some ship passmg so slowly
against the black hills that it seemed to be stationary,
though when my eyes returned to it again I saw with
wonder that it had moved. The sun shone, the black field
glittered, my father strode on, his arms slowly swinging,
the fan-shaped cast of grain gleamed as it fell and feU
again ; the row of meal-coloured sacks stood like squat
monuments on the field. My father took a special delight
in the sowing, and we all felt the first day was a special
day. But spring was only a few vivid happenings, not a
state, and before I knew it the motionless blue summer
was there, in which nothing happened.

The Story and the Fable

In Glasgow

Out of my salary I had to buy for a few pence a lunch at
a neighbouring dairy ; when that was done there was
not much left ; so that both for economy and health
(exercise being necessary in a town, my brothers assured
me) I walked to and from my work each day through a
slum, for there was no way of getting from the south
side of Glasgow to the city except tlirough slums. These
journeys filled me virith a deep sense of degradation : the
crumbling houses, the twisted faces, the obscene words

158

EDWIN MUIR

casually heard in passing, the ancient haiuiting stench of
pollution and decay, the arrogant women, the mean men,
the terrible children, frightened me, and at last filled
me with an immense, bhnd dejection. I had seen only
ordinary people before ; but on some of the faces that I
passed every day now there seemed to be written things
which only a fantastic imagination could have created,
and I shrank from reading them and quickly learned not
to see. After a while, like everyone who Uves in an
industrial town, I got used to these things ; I walked
through the slums as if they were an ordinary road
leading from my home to my work. I learned to do this
consciously, but if I was tired or ill I often had the feeling,
passing through EgHnton Street or Crown Street, that I
was dangerously close to the ground, deep down in a
place from which I might never be able to chmb up
again, while far above my head, inaccessible, ran a fme,
clean highroad ; and a soundless tremor shook me, the
premonition of an anxiety neurosis. These fears might
come on me at any time, and then, though I lived in a
decent house, the slums seemed to be everywhere around
me, a great, spreading swamp into which I might sink
for ever.

I soon made a habit of escaping into the surrounding
country in my free time, but even the fields seemed
blasted by disease, as if the swamp were invisibly spreading
there too. My nearest access to the country lay through
a little mining village, where grey men were always
squatting on their hunkers at the ends of the houses, and
the ground was covered with coal-grit. Beyond this, if
you turned to the left, there was a cinder path leading
past a pit, beside which was a filthy pool where yellow-
faced children splashed about. Tattered, worm-ringed
trees stood roxmd it in squalid sylvan peace ; the grass
was rough with smoke and grit ; the sluggish streams

159

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

were bluish black. To the right a road cHmbed up the
the Hundred Acre Dyke, along which mangy hawthorns
grew. The herbage was purer here, but all that could be
seen were blackened fields, smoke-stocks, and the sooty
ramparts of coal-pits, except to the south, where lay the
pretty httle town of Cathcart. These roads became so
associated in my mind with misery that after leaving the
south side of Glasgow I could never bear to revisit them.
My first years in Glasgow were wretched. The feeling
of degradation continued, but it became more and more
blind ; I did not know what made me unhappy, nor that
I had come into chaos. We had Hved comfortably enough
in Orkney, mainly on what we grew ; but here every-
thing had to be bought and paid for ; there was so much
money and so much food and clothed and warmth and
accommodation to be had for it, that was all. This new
state of things worried and perplexed my mother, and
it gave each one of us a feeling of stringency which we
had never known before. My elder brothers had already
grasped the principle of this new society, which was
competition, not co-operation, as it had been in Orkney.
The rest of us too presently came to understand this, but
my father and mother never did. Though we imagined
that we had risen in some way, without knowing it we
had sunk into another class ; for if Jimmie and Johnnie
had lost their jobs we should have had nothing left but a
small balance in a bank, which was not a responsive
adaptable thing like a farm, but would soon have run out.
We were members of the proletariat, though at that time
we had never heard the name. Happily my brothers kept
their jobs, and we did not have to become acquainted with
the abyss over which we Hved. Yet somewhere in our
minds we were conscious of it. The old sense of security
was gone.

The Story and the Fable
1 60

EDWIN MUIR

In Prague

We saw a great deal of Karel Capek, who lived a few
minutes' walk away from us in a rambling old house with
a large garden hidden away behind it. Though he was
about the same age as myself, he was already round-
backed ; the brightness of his eyes and the flush on his
cheeks showed that he was ill, He knew only a Uttle
English, and we only a Uttle German, so that we had to
converse in an absurd mixture of the two. He was
always busy, always merry, and always supplying us with
tickets to the Vinohrady Theatre. He often talked of the
hardships the people of Prague had suffered during the
War, and though he never said so, I imagine that his own
health was undermined during that dreadful time. The
attitude of the Czechs to the War was expressed in the
common saying, ' The worse things become, the better ' ;
they knew that they could not win their independence
except by the defeat of Germany and Austria. Capek
seemed to be knovwi and loved by everyone, and when
we walked along the street with him every second or
third passer-by would shout in a delighted voice, ' Oh,
KarliScu ! ' the equivalent of ' Hullo, Charley ! ' as if
the mere sight of him filled them with pleasure. This
warm, easy-going contact could only have been possible
in a comparatively small town, and it was the first thing
that made me wish that Edinburgh might become a
similar place, and that Scotland might become a nation
again.

Karel Capek died shortly after the seizure of his country
by Germany, whether of his illness or of a broken heart
I do not know. After the Prague in which he was
' KarliJf'ku ' to everyone, and where he could walk about
as he liked, the new Prague must have seemed a prison-
yard. .We met many other Czech writers. I dread to

(766) i6i 1*

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

think what may have happened to them now ; even if
no physical harm has come to them their life has been
snatched away, and their Prague no longer exists. We
spent many evenings in their houses ; we were taken into
dieir lives. We had no premonition then that history, in
Oswald Spengler's words, ' would take them by the throat
and do with them what must be done.' The idea of
history taking people by the throat pleased Spengler.

Our first few months in that Prague which no longer
exists were happy and carefree. We had a great deal of
leisure, for Uving was cheap and I could make enough to
keep us comfortably by writing two articles a month
for The Freeman and a weekly article for The New Age.
It was the first time since 'fourteen that I had known what
it was to have time for thinking and day-dreaming ; I
was in a foreign town where everything — ^the people,
the houses, the very shop signs — was different ; I began
to learn the visible world all over again. In plasgow the
ugliness of everything — the walks through the slums, the
uncongenial work — ^had turned me in upon myself, so
that I no longer saw things, but was merely aware of
them in an indirect way. In Prague everything seemed to
be asking me to notice it ; I spent weeks in an orgy of
looking ; I saw everywhere die visible world straight
before my eyes. At this time too I realised that my fears
were gone ; there was nothing to spoil my enjoyment
of this new world which had been created simply by
travelling a few hundred miles and crossing two frontiers.
Willa and I explored the surroxmdings of Prague and
made excursions up the Vltava, where the leaves of the
cherry-trees were red against the silver stubble of the
fields. We went on the river-boat to Velkd Chuchle and
Maid Chuchle, walked in the woods and stopped at Utde
country inns, where we had tea with rum. Everywhere
we were struck by the independence of the people.

162

EDWIN MUIH

For the first few months we did not try to meet any
EngHsh people, though we knew there was a fairly large
colony in the town ; we liked our soUtude of two, and
we wanted to see all these new things with our own eyes.
As winter came on it grew very cold ; by the middle
of December the river was frozen. On die theory that
walking in cold, bracing weather was good for the health
we set out one afternoon for a walk in the country. Pani
Maid looked surprised when she heard of our intention,
but, assuming that British habits were different from hers,
she said notlung. All I remember of that walk is a snow-
covered field on the outskirts of Prague dotted with big
crows, and a black-bearded Jew in a long black fur-
trimmed overcoat and a fur cap walking rapidly across
it to a httle cottage ; he walked as if he were walking on
a city pavement, not through snow two feet deep, and
this gave his progress a curious nightmare effect. The
sky was shrouded, the snow dead white, the crows and
the Jew glittering black. It was so cold that the longer
we walked the more chilled we grew. At last we turned
back, went into a cafe at the end of our street, and drank
great quantities of hot tea with rum until we felt warm
again. When we came out the wind had risen, and it
was so cold now that we had to go into doorways to
breathe. That was a particularly cold winter, we were
told. The river remained frozen until the beginning of
March.

During the winter we came to know the English colony.
Some of them were giving English lessons, some studying
Czech ; the others were mainly connected with business
concerns or the Embassy. A dancing class was started
where the Czechs and the English met twice a week.
We joined it, and after that we heard all the gossip which
flies through a foreign colony, the members of which are
slightly suspicious of one another for living out of

163

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

England : there is never any convincing argument for
living out of England. We became members of the
English community, attended dances, and took part in
Carnival when it came round. But we still had three-
quarters of every day to do what we pleased with.

After the New Year the cold grew less intense, and
every morning after breakfast we went to the ICinsk^
Park, which was still deep in snow, to feed the birds.
This was a favourite occupation of the Prague people,
and the gardens were consequently swarming with
finches, sparrows, blackcaps, blue tits, and woodpeckers,
which were so tame that they would sit on your finger
and peck crumbs or fragments of nut firom your hand.
At the end of February Holms appeared for a few days,
enveloped in an enormous long brown overcoat, in
which, with his red hair and red beard, he looked Russian.
He made a great impression on the English colony, who
kept trooping to our lodgings to have a look at him. A
yoimg EngUshman firom the Midlands who had written
part of a novel which, so far as I know, has not been
finished yet, dropped in while Holms was there, carrying
a copy of Ulysses, which had just come out. Like many
aesthetes firom the North and Midlands of England, he
was both very sensitive and very shrewd, a cross between
Aubrey Beardsley and Samuel Smiles. He was small,
dark, thin, malicious and very plucky. He had once had
a Platonic affair with Gaby Deslys while he was working
in a store in London, and amused us with stories of how
she concealed him when her lovers came to visit her ;
she would send him to the pantry to have a good meal
while she entertained the suitor of the evening — z really
humane act, for he always looked underfed. We both
came to like him, but after a while we lost sight of him ;
the English colony did not know what to mdte of him.

As the winter was ending WOla caught bronchitis, and
164

EDWIN MUIR

we called in a doctor who lived above us, a handsome
Austrian. He had attended the same university as Otto
Weininger, the author of Sex and Character, who, he
said, had been cruelly tormented by his fellow-students,
and actually involved in a sham duel staged to make
him look ridiculous. The doctor related all this objec-
tively, without showing pleasure or disapproval. He
had an extraordinarily calm, disillusioned, and yet pleasant
manner. The War had killed his ambition ; he did not
think that the battle of hfe was worth waging ; all
that remained to him was a sense of honour. He had
left Vieima because it was no longer the Vienna he had
loved before the War. He had no political convictions,
and if any reference was made to poHtics, he looked dis-
gusted ; he gave me more strongly than anyone else I
have ever met the feeling that he had come to a place
from which there was no turning back, the place which
Franz Kafka says must be reached ; but in the doctor's
case it did not seem to be the right place, even though he
would never turn back. He did not Hke Prague, which
as an Austrian he found provincial ; but he had no in-
tention of leaving it. He had come to terms with a
completely unsatisfactory state of things, being convinced
that life itself was completely unsatisfactory. Yet he was
a kind and honourable man. We saw him at intervals ;
he was always pleasant and distant, like an amiable damned
soul speaking to tyros who were not yet either saved or

damned.

The Story and the Fable

165

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

The Good Town

Look at it well. This was the good town once.

Known everywhere, with streets of friendly neighbours,

Street friend to street and house to house. In summer

All day the doors stood open ; lock and key

Were quaint antiquities fit for museums

With gyves and rusty chains. The ivy grew

From post to post across the prison door.

The yard behind was sweet with grass and flowers,

A place where grave philosophers loved to walk.

Old Time that promises and keeps his promise

Was our sole lord indulgent and severe.

Who gave and took away with gradual hand

That never hurried, never tarried, still

Adding, subtracting. These our houses had

Long fallen into decay but that we knew

Kindness and courage can repair Time's faults,

And serving him breeds patience and courtesy

In us, light sojourners and passing subjects.

There is a virtue in tranquillity

That makes all fitting, childhood and youth and age,

Each in its place.

Look well. These mounds of rubble.
And shattered piers, half-windows, broken arches
And groping arms were once inwoven in walls
Covered with saints and angels, bore the roof
Shot up the towering spire. These gaping bridges
Once spaimed the quiet river which you see
Beyond that patch of raw and angry earth
Where the new concrete houses sit and stare.
Walk with me by the river. See, the poplars
Still gather quiet gazing on the stream.
166

EDWIN MUIH

The white road winds across the small green hill
And then is lost. These few things still remain.
Some of our houses too, though not what once
Lived there and drew a strength from memory.
Our people have been scattered, or have come
As strangers back to mingle with the strangers
Who occupy our rooms where none can find
The place he knew but setdes where he can.
No family now sits at the evening table ;
Father and son, mother and child are out,
A quaint and obsolete fashion. In our houses
Invaders speak their foreign tongues, informers
Appear and disappear, chance whores, officials
Humble or high, frightened, obsequious.
Sit carefully in comers. My old friends
(Friends ere these great disasters) are dispersed
In parties, armies, camps, conspiracies.
We avoid each other. If you see a man
Who smiles good-day or waves a lordly greeting
Be sure he's a poUceman or a spy.
We know them by their free and candid air.

It was not time that brought these things upon us.
But these two wars that trampled on us twice,
Advancing and withdrawing, like a herd
Of clumsy-footed beasts on a stupid errand
Unknown to them or us. Pure chance, pure malice,
Or so it seemed. And when, the first war over.
The armies left and our own men came back
From every point by many a turning road.
Maimed, crippled, changed in body or in mind,
It was a sight to see the cripples come
Out on the fields. The land looked all awry.
The roads ran crooked and the hght fell wrong.
Our fields were hke a pack of cheating cards
167

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Dealt out at random — all we had to play
In the bad game for the good stake, our life.
We played ; a Uttle shrewdness scraped us through.
Then came the second war, passed and repassed,
And now you see our town, the fine new prison.
The house doors shut and barred, the fiightened feces
Peeping round comers, secret poUce, informers,
And all afraid of all.

How did it come ?
From outside, so it seemed, an endless source.
Disorder inexhaustible, strange to us.
Incomprehensible. Yet sometimes now
We ask ourselves, we the old citizens :
' Could it have come firom us ? Was our peace peace ?
Our goodness goodness ? That old hfe was easy
And kind and comfortable ; but evil is restless
And gives no rest to the cruel or the kind.
How could our town grow wicked in a moment ?
What is the answer ? Perhaps no more than this.
That once the good men swayed our Uves, and those
Who copied them took a while the hue of goodness,
A passing loan ; while now the bad are up,
And we, poor ordinary neutral stuflf.
Not good nor bad, must ape them as we can.
In sullen rage or vile obsequiousness.
Say there's a balance between good and evil
In things, and it's so mathematical,
So finely reckoned that a jot of either,
A bare proponderance will do all you need,
Make a town good, or make it what you see.
But then, you'll say, only that jot is wanting,
That grain of virtue. No : when evil comes
All things turn adverse, and we must begin
At the beginning, heave the groaning world
i68

EDWIN MUIR

Back in its place again, and clamp it there.
Then all is hard and hazardous. We have seen
Good men made evil wrangling with the evil,
Straight minds grown crooked fighting crooked minds.
Our peace betrayed us ; we betrayed our peace.
Look at it well. This was the good town once.'

These thoughts we have, walking among our ruins.

The Labyrinth

169

GEORGE MILLAR

Stone Walls . . .

While the others settled down to play bridge or poker
1 normally read for an hour or so and then went to bed.
I slept well at Gavi. It was a non-intellectual life there of
discipline and exercise. I was hardening my body every
day for the ordeal that surely lay ahead, for I had few
illusions that the Germans would easily let us go when
Italy gave up the struggle. There were too many strange
and important officers in the camp, pericolosi, as the
Italians called them — officers such as young Colonel
David Stirling of the Scots Guards, the most dashing
raider perhaps of all our remarkable officers in the war in
the desert.

Also the fact that we were so far north excited me
strongly after all those months down near the instep of
Italy. Binns and Johnstone felt the same. After all, we
were only a few hours in a fast train from Chiasso, a part
of the Swiss frontier which was not too hard to cross.
At Gavi we could talk to scores of officers who had actually
been at large, who had travelled on the Italian railways,
who could tell us how to buy a ticket at Milan station
without arousing suspicion, who could draw plans of
Como, showing where to go past the bus terminus to find
the road for Chiasso and the frontier.

Not long after our arrival came the first break by
officers from Gavi. It was a lower compound escape,
so that even if I had been an old Gavi hand I should have
had no part in it. It was one of the most remarkable
achievements in all the history of escape from prison.

The central figure was a South African Hercules called
Buck Palm. Buck was a loose, slouching man, with a
lined, rugged heavy-jawed face and a mane of black hair

170

GEORGE MILLAR

as long as Samson's. He had been an all-in wrestler, a
prospector and many other things besides. He rolled
with long slanting hen-toed strides about the prison,
talking sensibly and well to his countrymen in Afrikaans
and to us in Enghsh with a strong Afrikaans accent. He
was the teacher at a class which met every day after tea
to go through a tremendous series of muscle-building
contortions and exercises.

From a cell in the lower courtyard Buck first tunnelled
a hole in the wall which led to the cellars and the large
reservoir hidden below the courtyard. This hole in itself
was a major triumph. ItaHan supervision was so un-
remitting and so thorough that it seemed incredible that
any hole, no matter how well concealed, could escape
their daily — sometimes twice daily — searches.

Down below, day after day, and in the icy winter,
Buck swam across the reservoir and tunnelled through
sixteen feet of sohd rock. A man less strong would
never have got through. A man who had not the mining
in his blood and the sting of the fall of Tobruk to avenge
would never have got through. To me it is one of the
fme pictures of the war ; the grim, wintry fortress up
above, with lesser mortals shivering in their beds, and
down in the bowels Buck, a great, muscled devil, dripping
with icy water, burning and boring his way through soUd
rock. Burning in fact, for in order to split the rock he
smuggled down quantities of wood and built large fires
against the face. Then, when the stone was hot, he flung
bucketfuls of cold water against it to crack it. Then he
smashed into it with his great crowbar. What a man !
What a noble monster of a man !

It was right and just that such efforts should be success-
ful. One night Buck and some of his South African
friends went through the hole, swam the reservoir, and
crawled through the last tunnel on to the roofs of the

171

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Italian troops' triangular compound jutting immediately
below our mess windows. They dropped into the com-
pound and let themselves over the edge of it on a rope.

The small South African party got away. They were
followed by Jack Pringle and (Baron) Cram. Pringle
got down all right. The rope broke with Cram, and
he injured his leg in the fall. However, he hobbled off
into the darkness.

But at Gavi the sentries were always watchful. The
others following on, including the tall David Stirling,
found the way barred, and several of them were caught
by the Italians when they were actually through the
tunnel. This escape, briUiant though it was, taught me
another lesson — that spectacular mass escapes are the
worst kind, for they draw immediate counter-measures
from the enemy. Following this break from Gavi
(supposed, the Italians frequently said, to be the most
secure jail in the world), two divisions of troops were
immediately turned out to scoiu: the country. Cram
and the South Africans, including Buck, were still on
foot and were quickly rounded up. Jack Pringle, a
personable and quick-witted young man who spoke
good Italian with an American accent, made a speedy
get-away on the train to Milan, and thence to the banks
of Lake Maggiore. He found the lake a tough pro-
position. Escape by water was difBcult, since there were
no private boats available and the ItaHan patrol boats
were sinister things with silent electric motors and power-
fill searchlights which snapped suddenly on and off. All
the frontier guards were on the look-out, and poor Jack,
an escaping genius if ever there was one, was caught
within sight of SAvitzerland.

The next attempt was made by our bold Brigadier
Clifton. One night, when I was already in bed and the
Room 14 poker game was at its noisy height, there was

172

GEORGE MILLAR

a sudden burst of firing from three or four different points
on the battlements. This was followed by Italian screams
at the brigadier, who was perched on top of the roof on
the other side of our courtyard.

He had climbed out of his window (disregarding a
lOO-foot sheer drop), swinging on the shutter until he
could scramble on to the steep old roof above. The
brigadier had home-made rope wound round him, and
he planned to go right along that roof and then somehow
descend a couple of large precipices well sprinkled with
sentry posts. The noise of his passage on the roof alarmed
the sentries, and he found himself up in the sky dazzled
by searchUghts, and with bullets whistMng past him and
chipping the slates. His comment as they led him off
to the punishment cell was : ' I knew I was aU right so
long as they were aiming at me. But I was afraid they
might be aiming to miss.'

Clifton, a bald, lobsterish httle man with freckles all
over his muscle-rounded back, and a devihsh twinkle in
his forget-me-not-blue eyes, always preferred dash to
caution.

Soon after this Johnny, Wally and I got to work on
our ovm escape route. August was beginning, and the
heat on the rock was stifling. The summer was sHpping
away. Six of us formed a team with an ambitious plan
to cut through some cellars under our courtyard to
underground passages which we knew existed. We
beHeved that these passages led out of the rock on the far
side from Gavi — a side which none of us had ever seen,
even on our monthly escorted walks outside the fortress.

Binns, Johnson and I made up one team for the
tunnelling. The other team consisted of the two New
Zealanders, Jim Craig and John Redpath, and George
Duncan, a long-necked Scottish Commando officer, who
had been a farmer near Dumfries.

173

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

We worked steadily on alternate days. On working
days the three of us would slip as soon as possible after
morning roll-call into the quartermaster's stores, one of
the ground-floor rooms in our courtyard. Once inside
we locked the door. Often it was difficult to get in, for
there was always at least one carahiniere wandering about
the courtyard on guard. We had a team of people
trained to distract the Itahans' attention, talking to them
until they turned away from the door so that we could
walk in unobserved. There were also two high sentry
posts looking down into our courtyard which had to be
watched, for the sentries could see the doorway. But the
sheer obviousness of the entrance was a good thing. The
Itahans could never have beUeved that we were using that
room without their knowledge.

Once inside we took our apparatus out of the hole —
a square hole cut by Jim and John in the wall between the
room and the courtyard. The hole led into a ventilation
shaft some fifteen feet deep. We hung a rope made firom
plaited sheets down the shaft, and it was fairly easy for
a supple man to get down and up it. The remainder of
the apparatus consisted of a series of iron tools forged
in the cook-house fires from old bedsteads, and lamps
made from margarine tins, with pyjama-flannel wicks
rising out of boiled olive-oil given to us by the mess.

Two of us went down the hole at a time to work a
four-hour shift on the face while the third stayed at the
top to communicate with the outside world. A line of
officers sat reading and sunbathing with their chairs
tilted against the wall. The officer sitting against the
door was always one of our other team. He passed
warnings if the Itahans arrived to make a search or if
the carabinieri in the courtyard wandered so near that
they might hear our hammering.

As the tempo of our work increased we were able to ask
174

GEORGE MILLAR

the British authorities to organise hand-ball, improvised
squash-rackets, and other games in the courtyard so thar
their noise would help to drown our efforts below.

The air was foul down there. There was a long series
of nine large cells, all witli low barrel vaults, and com-
municating with each other by arched openings in the
thick dividing walls. The previous entrance to the cells
led from nxmiber six, counting from the end one in which
we worked, and it had been solidly walled-up by the
ItaHans before the first British prisoners of war arrived at
Gavi. Austrian prisoners had been incarcerated there
during the First World War, and there was still pathetic
evidence of their Uving death — evidence in the shape of
old india-rubber children's balls, dates, names and
inscriptions in German cut on the massive stonework,
and odd rusty mugs and chamber-pots. But all the
ventilation holes had been walled in, and most of the
shafts had been filled with rubble, which overflowed
into the dark cells. It was a sinister place, fuU of evil
memories.

The work was a question of chipping away with
chisels and a muffled hammer at the cement, levering
with flimsy crowbars, and gradually, painfully, stone
after massive stone, working a small shaft into the end
wall. Our eyes became sore, partly from the chips,
pardy from the lamps ; and the foul air pinched at our
chests. The hole grew very slowly, every inch represent-
ing cramp and sweat blisters.

We came out of the tunnel at tea-time, carefully cleaned
ourselves in the quartermaster's stores, hid the hole in the
wall with a packing-case full of spare battle-dress, and
slipped out into the dazzling sunshine of the courtyard
when the sentry on watch outside gave us the all clear.
Then we went down to the cook-house where the cooks
had saved a meal for us.

175

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

On off days we were employed on watch outside the
door, in making and sharpening tools for the work, and
in perfecting our clothing for the escape.

This time WaUy and I were going together and Johnny
was teaming up with the brigayier who, since he was too
conspicuous a figure, was not working on our tunnel,
but was watching it with closest interest. After talking
with almost everyone in the camp who had been out,
Wally and I made a good plan, and a simple one. We
were going to catch a train direct from the next station
to Gavi, change trains at Milan for Como, walk firom
Como to Chiasso, where we knew the very spot in the
frontier wire that we would cross. We believed that ten
hours after escaping we should be on Swiss territory.
Everything was worked out, the price of die tickets, the
lay-out of the stations, the ItaUan phrases I should have
to use, our behaviour on the crowded trains.

By lashing out liberally with my hoarded tins I had
bought article after article of clothing, so that now I
could leave the camp quite respectably dressed in a blue,
double-breasted suit (mainly adapted from naval uni-
form). Wally was almost as well equipped. We had
forged German papers (made by an expert in the camp).
I had prepared a greasy dye for my fair hair by powdering
brown chalk into brilliantine (a mixture I had already
tried with success at Padula).

Soon after all this work began we were alarmed to see
many German troops filtering into our valley. The
Sicily campaign had ended with Allied success, the Allies
had gained a foothold in southern Italy. It seemed only
natural that the Germans should be injecting troops into
northern Italy. But what troops they looked to us, who
were used all of us to the mechanised warfare of the
desert ! They had old equipment, and their transport
was horse-drawn. There were a great many of them, and

176

GEORGE MILLAB

they were settling down along the valley as though they
intended to stay. Gradually we became accustomed to
their presence, and, such is the optimism of man, we
decided that Germans of that type would take no action
against us.

Then one night as we sat at dinner a great singing shout
rose from the Italian quarters below us and from the town
of Gavi. We looked out, and the dark material was
being torn from the windows at Gavi. Window after
window came aHve, until the whole singing town was
sparkling with light.

The Italian Government had declared an armistice.
We thought that we were free.

' There is some bother with the Germans,' a friendly
carabiniere said to me as I came out into the misty court-
yard early the following morning.

' What sort of bother, amico mio ? '

' Oh,' he answered gaily. ' We are going to put them in
their place. They cannot push us around as they please.'

1 had never heard an Italian talking about Germans like
that before, and it worried me. I moved vaguely down
the courtyard, passed, unmolested by the Italian sentries,
to the top of the ramp, and stood there in the deliciously
fresh morning sunshine pondering the events of the night
before.

It had been the most breathless night since our attempted

escape from Padula. I had gone to sleep with the greatest

difficulty, for I had been obliged by the movement and

optimism around me to allow myself to think of Anne as

somethmg now reasonably close and attainable, and to

add to the prospect of seeing her again dreams of clean

linen sheets, hot water to wash with, music from a full

orchestra. . . .

Crsd) j™ IS

THE THISTLE AKD THE PEN

Earlier that night two ItaHan officers, the only two in
the garrison who were friendly to the British, had come
into our mess to shake hands with us all. They wept with
joy. Our brigadier went straight into the Italian section
of the camp to demand of ' Joe Grape ' that we be
immediately released. ' Joe ' refused, stating that it would
be too dangerous for us to be released while the camp was
surrounded by Germans. ' Joe ' said that he would hold
us in Gavi by force until he received specific contrary
orders from the Badoglio Government. From the
windows of the mess we could see the German transport
unit camped under the trees of the market-place, stolidly
settling down, as though this night were exactly like any
other.

Brigadier Clifton, energetic little fire-eater, had pre-
pared an elaborate cloak-and-dagger scheme for breaking
out of the camp — a scheme in which, with many officers,
I had been trained to play a minor role. I believe that this
scheme would have succeeded, though at the cost of some
casualties. But for one reason or another it was not put
into operation.

So tnat Armistice night we had climbed the ramp once
more after dinner to be locked into our courtyard as
usual by the Italians. There was much excitement and
a lot of singing. They sang the Maori Farewell, and
the Zulu Warrior, which began (phonetically) :

I ziga zoomba . . .

(phonetically from memory).

And a rather charming Uttle song, the chorus of which
goes :

Git away, you bumble-bee,

Git off my nose.

I ain't no prairie flower,

Ain't no bleeding rose. . . .
178

GEOKGE MILtAR

While the singing was at its height I had walked up and
down the courtyard with Colonel Fraser. We agreed
that we should have felt more comfortable outside prison
and foot-slogging it for the Allied armies in the south.
I had a great opinion of his judgment, and felt as he did,
that since we had been made prisoners by the Germans,
and not by the Italians, it would be extraordinary if the
Germans allowed us to walk out. Fraser said that he
was sure the Germans would seize us ; and that whenever
diey arrived he intended to have himself walled in at the
top of the ramp at a place where John Redpath had
pierced a small hole into an ancient passage-way leading
through the rock. Redpath and Slater, a third New
Zealander, were also going in there. The three of them
had prepared a large store of food and water. . . .

Still meditating, 1 drifted do-wn the ramp. Now I was
on the level of the mess ; I could see the zigzag path
descending towards Gavi, and I stopped thinking back.

Fifteen Italians, led by the familiarly ridiculous figure
of a popinjay officer, were cautiously descending the path.
As I watched I saw the patrol set out round the last corner
before the highest houses of Gavi. They vanished for a
moment; but later we were able to reconstruct the events
that took place in the minute they were out of sight.

Two Germans in steel helmets were leaning against
the wall of the first house, actually the quarters of the
carabinieri. One of the Italian soldiers playfully levelled
his rifle and said : ' Eh eh,' mocking at the Germans in a
childish way. In reply one of the Germans shot him with
his machine pistol. The Italians picked up the wounded
man and, keening hke witches, straggled up the hill.

Eastern cries of grief greeted the bloody body of the
dymg soldier as he was carried mto the fortress. The

179

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

sentries on the ramp levelled their rifles at me, and ordered
me back to my quarters.

All the Italians now took up action stations around the
ramparts, with officers crawling from position to position.
What had happened was that the Germans had dispatched
a company of front-line infantry to take over our fortress
and assure our capture. While it was on its way they
ordered the local troops, sixty men of the Veterinary Corps
under a farrier-sergeant, to attack and take the fortress.

Soon after the patrol incident the farrier-sergeant fired
a mortar smoke-bomb at the mighty walls. Our brigadier,
watching from his room high up under the roof, saw the
Italian answer. The Itahan vice-commandant, a miserable
and decrepit old colonel, stumbled down the slope towards
Gavi with ten men and a very large white flag.

An hour later the first German troops, roughly dressed
soldiers, with horse dung caked on their dusty boots,
shambled stolidly on to the battlements. They greeted us
with immense curiosity and even a kind of awe as they
moved clumsily to take over from the Italians. Gavi
fortress had not sulMed its centuries-old record of instant
surrender. Very soon more Uvely Germans under a thin
and efficient young cavalry captain, troops bristling with
automatic weapons, arrived to increase our guard.

The spiritual let-down at seeing these hated and
efficient uniforms again at such close quarters, at finding
ourselves their prisoners when we had hoped that we
were free, was very terrible. Their arrival threw the
whole camp into a turmoil.

Everybody rushed round the place looking for a way
out on his own. That evening for the first time (since the
German sentries did not know where we were not sup-
posed to go) we were able to walk out on to the battle-
ments above our courtyard, on the topmost pinnacle of
the fortress. Several of us saw at once that it would be

1 80

GEORGE MItLAR

possible with a good rope to get down from one corner,
where there was an ancient look-out turret unobserved
by any German sentry. With Binns, Johnson and five
others I ran down to our rooms below, and by tearing
out the cord reinforcements from the canvas covers on
the beds we managed in a few hours to make a hundred
feet of stirong pleated rope. Filling our pockets with
chocolate and emergency rations, we cUmbed again to
the ramparts, But the game was spoiled at die last
moment by a bird-like Italian business man, quite a like-
able and decent person, who was interpreter at the camp.
He ran out of the Italian officers' mess, far below us, and
waved his arms in windmill gesticulations at us, screammg
to the Germans : ' Don't allow them up there. You
don't know them. They are all most dangerous. . . .'

We were never allowed up there again.

When he was later asked why he did this, the interpreter
was reported to have repHed : ' For my wife and
children.'

Brigadier Clifton now issued clear orders. A swarthy
British officer firom Alexandria, George Sukas, who spoke
among other languages fluent Italian, had wheedled
from a cafflbiniere the exact whereabouts of the secret
passage for 'which our party had so long been tunnelling.

We soon noticed that the Germans, compared to the
Italians, were sluggish guards. This was not indeed to be
wondered at, for they were still befuddled in the maze of
the fortress. We began to cut a new way out, work
which would have been quite impossible under former
conditions, with daily searches and all the compUcations
of Italian precautions.

An entrance was to be cut from the end room in our
corridor into a disused lavatory, and from the lavatory
a way was to be broken to the mouth of the secret passage.

The working of this exit was entrusted to three senior
i8i

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

officers. Major ' Waddy ' Wadeson, of the Royal Engin-
eers, a small, virile yellow-eyed man who had worked
all over the world as a mining engineer ; Major Brian
Upton, of the Essex Yeomanry, always known as ' Hack-
in-the-Bush,' readily distinguishable by his bowed back
and enormous red moustache ; and Commander John
dejago.

It was agonising to wait, day after day, while the three
men laboriously worked their way through the bowels of
the camp. The strain on them was heavy. The strain
on us, who waited with freedom in Italy or what looked
like permanent incarceration in Germany hanging on
their efforts, was even worse. There was discontent
among the younger tuimellers that the work had been
given to these men. But the brigadier could not have
chosen more wisely. All three were experienced jail-
breakers, and ' Hack-in-the-Bush ' was the camp's genius
at making anything firom a skeleton key to an explosive
charge.

At the end of the first day they had cut their way into
the lavatory, and had chiselled in the thick lavatory wall
a hole large enough to see into the passage itself.

Already Colonel Fraser, with his two accomplices, had
been walled in at the top of the ramp. A friend among
the Italian officers had destroyed the records, so that the
Germans were unable to hold accurate roll-calls.

The brigadier launched his alternative scheme, to be
put into operation if the secret passage exit failed. All
officers who wished to hide were ordered to give par-
ticulars of their hiding-places, and to work with the
authorities to provide and stow food and water. It was
felt by some that the Germans either would not have the
time or would not bother to search for officers missing
when the order to move to Germany was given.

That day another company of German infantry arrived
182

GEORGE MILLAB

in the camp, and we had the doubtful satisfaction of
seeing the entire ItaUan garrison paraded below us by the
Germans. The Italians handed over their arms as though
they were glad to be rid of them.

' Wad^y,' Jago and ' Hack-in-the-Bush ' broke into
the passage, only to find that two strong steel grilles
barred the way. Also the mouth of the passage opened
on to the ramparts near a German sentry post, so that
they were obliged to work silently, and therefore slowly.
By nightfall they had filed through the first grille.

Binns and I, although fuUy prepared to leave by the
passage, decided that it would be reasonable to prepare
for its possible failure. So that day we went down our
old hole from the quartermaster's store and, at Wally's
clever suggestion, built up a framework of wood, stories
and blankets into an extremely solid shelter. We covered
this over with big stones and rubble until it looked quite
indistinguishable fi:om the other rubble-piles, but it con-
tained a space six feet by four feet in which we could lie
side by side. It was a double-bluff hiding-place.
■ On Monday, 13 th September, everything looked good.
' Waddy ' and party, now working with several strong
helpers, had opened both grilles. The passage had
degenerated into a sewer which apparently had been
blocked by a land-shde. They were tunnelling now
through loose earth ; and by breakfast-time they had
reached the roots of the grass, and calculated that within
a few hours the way would be free.

A movement order for escape by this route had been
completed by the British orderly room. We were all to
leave that night in batches of twenty, with half-hourly
intervals between batches. There was a httle hard feeling
about the order of departure, which did not go by
seniority. But Wally, Johnny and I, thanks to our
escaping prochvities, were well up on the list.

183

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

I was sitting with Colin Armstrong and Tom Murdoch
in Room 14 at ten o'clock that morning when Richard
Carr arrived, breathless from running up the ramp, to
tell us that the Germans had given everybody in the camp
half an hour's notice to be ready to move to Germany.

After half an hour of pandemonium, with everybody
charging in every direction, and the people who were
going into hiding getting mixed up with people who
were going away intending to make a break for it en
route for Germany, Wally and I stood at the bottom of
our httle shaft, helping down ten other officers. The
ten were all strangers to these cells — Wally and I were
the only two of our original tunnelling party who had
decided to hide there — and they were understandably
surprised by the damp, the darkness and die stale clammy
smell.

Biims had thoughtfully brought down the last of our
oil-lamps, and with this we continued to perfect our
camouflaged hut. Other people scrabbled out beds or
hiding-places in the rubble, and all were busily at work
when the senior officer there, pale-eyed Squadron-Leader
Bax, ordered us sternly to stop making a noise and to
put out the Ught.

Our hut was in the cell from which the former entrance
to the line of cells had led. The other officers, obeying
the nervous herd instinct, eventually all gathered in the
end cell of the series at the other end from our entrance
shaft and the tunnel face upon which we had worked for
nearly two months. We knew that some fifty or sixty
officers at least were in hiding now, and I cannot say that
either of us had much confidence in the trick. We were
only separated from Colonel Eraser's party by some fifty
feet of rock. Tony Hay and some others were flimsily
and dangerously hidden under the roof over the corridor
outside Room 14. Many others, including the brigadier

184

GEOKGE MILLAR

and Tag Pritchard, were hiding in the mouth of the new
escape route, hoping that the Germans wovdd not find
them in time to prevent them from digging their way
out. David Stirling and Buck Palm were well hidden
down a lavatory shaft in the lower courtyard. Tom
Murdoch and Richard Carr had been cemented in under
the stone staircase leading up from the lower courtyard
to the infirmary ; and were to be fed through india-
rubber tubes with hot Ovaltine and HorHck's poured in
by the medical orderlies. They had a similar reverse
process for ridding their almost airless hiding-place of
waste Uquids. Many others were hidden in die camp
wood-pile. Altogether there were far too many in
hiding. The only hope seemed to be that the brigadier's
lot would dig themselves free. The Germans might
suppose if they found an empty tunnel that all of us were
already outside the fortress walls.

After an hour or two below we heard the Germans
begin to loot our quarters. There was the crash of
furniture being thrown from the windows of our rooms
to the cobbles below, then much singing and shouting as
the looters got in amongst our tins of butter and jam.
After that we heard retching in the courtyard. They
had been eating tinned butter by the handful.

Then the Germans came to hunt us out with picks and
hand-grenades. Their search was evidently methodical.
Bax's party reported that they had heard the brigadier's
voice on the ramp. Almost immediately after this the
enemy found Colonel Fraser's party, whom we had
considered almost imfindable. The answer to this
efficiency (although we did not know it at the time) was
that 'Joe Grape,' who knew the fortress as well as his
wife, was telling the methodical Germans which walls to
break down. They could not get at Fraser and the two
New Zealanders with him, but they fired rifles through a

185

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

hole which they had hacked into the narrow cleft in the
rock. The bullets buzzed around in the confined space
until the three came out.

It was clearly only a matter of time until a search-party
entered our own cells. Binns and I withdrew into our
shelter and closed ourselves in with a lafge stone blocking
the two-foot-by-one-foot-six-inch entrance. At 7 p.m.,
nine hours after going into hiding, we heard the first
pick strike on the walled-up doorway. Binns and I lay
touching in the darkness. We counted twenty-three
savage strokes, then the brickwork collapsed with a
rumble into our cell. Five or six Germans came in at the
double. They carried some kind of lantern. Its yellow
hght flickered through the small interstices of our shelter.
They all turned left, and searched through the empty
series of cells there. We heard shouts, probably caused
by the sight of the mouth of oiu: old tunnel. Then they
came clattering back past us. An instant later they
challenged our friends in the end cell. They shouted at
them to put their hands up and walk out singly. As
they went we heard one German ask Squadron-Leader
Bax, ' Are there any more British here ? '

' You can see for yourselves that there are not,' he
answered curtly in German.

For two hours we lay there, cold, cramped, but in
peace. The Germans seemed to have stopped searching
the upper part of die fortress. But soon after nine we
heard another party clattering ujt the ramp. We were
not yet accustomed to the thunderous noise of German
jack-boots in that rocky place. The search-party came
straight into our cell. They searched among some of the
rubble-piles in the other cells, then they collected the food
store of our fellow-officers and proceeded to divide it out.

This was done in our cell, and two of them actually
sat on the upper stones of our hiding-place. The ' roof

186

GEORGB MILLAH

above me was made of the frames of deck-chairs, and I
could see these bend slightly under the Germans' weight.
We survived two more desultory searches that night, and
I blessed Binns with his heaven-sent idea of the double
bluff. It looked as though we were going to get away
with it, and that was worth any amount of discomfort.
I never remember being more cold and cramped. The
cellars ran with dampness.

By eight o'clock the following morning all noise of
German presence had died down. Wally and 1 crawled
out to stretch ourselves,, breakfasted off chocolate and
water, and decided that we would remain hidden until
nightfall, when we would try to climb down the battle-
ments. We knew where to find our rope. However, at
ten o'clock we heard a large German search-party march
up the ramp and halt at the hole into our cells. This
time it was a real search. They tore everything to pieces
in the other cells ; but because our pile of stones was
small, and because it was in the half-hght of the entrance
cell instead of in the darkness farther inside, they did not
suspect it. They were urged on with screaming, angry
shouts.

When we thought once more that they had missed us
a German bayonet crashed right through the stones and
our wooden structure, ending within two inches of
Binns's ear.

A torch beam shone through the hole and a German
shouted, ' Mensch ! '

They tore down the structure, half crushing us under-
neath it, and dragged us out.

Homed Pigeon

187

LILIAN^ BOWES LYON

An Old Farm Labourer

You carved your story upon the country-side.

Your wrongs, your rights are told where needy brooks

Run gold awhile, or fouled ; here ; there.

In you sardonicaUy a scarecrow talks,

A god evokes the venerable stillnesses

Of water and earth and air.

What stoved-in patience, what extortionate rocks

The weald you've ploughed and all the amber tide

Of autumn, punctually rolled back, lays bare !

Towns are for younger bones ; in yours abide

The old, rich dung, each crust you learnt to share.

Long years of wedlock, tedium of illnesses.

Field-mice, hunger of hawks.

Collected Poems

Death in Summer

The soldier lay on the ground, he felt the Earth
Swell eagerly through his adolescent Umbs ;

He was free of a sudden to ponder the slow birth
Of mountains, share the articulate hush of streams.

The upstart oak, the bracken's bending crozier
Brindled the partial Ught ; how long a sigh

Had stilled these rocks, what early and potent glacier
Plotted this valley, green to man's young eye.

Lovely with sleep he turned the lock of Nature ;

Strange was the land — oh too profound that sea !
When morning broke he seemed to have gained in stature ;
Like other turbulent boys, fulfilled as he.

Collected Poems
l88

COLIN MACDONALD

Lord Leverhulme and the Men of Lewis

At the farm steading we found over a thousand people
gathered for the meeting ; mostly men, but there was
a feir smattering of women. It was a sullen crowd,
resentful of the situation which had developed. One
wrong note might have precipitated serious trouble. But
no wrong note was struck ; and if Lord Leverhulme
sensed any danger he certainly showed no sign. He
walked right into the middle of the crowd, made a little
' ring ' for himself and his interpreter, mounted an up-
turned tub (in which the farmer was wont to brew a real
knock-me-down brand of beer), raised high his hat,
smiled genially all round and said :

' Good morning, everybody 1 Have you noticed that
the sim is shining this morning ? — ^and that this is the first
time it has shone in Lewis for ten days ? [This was a
Jactl]

' I regard that as a good omen. This is going to be a
great meeting. This is going to be a friendly meeting.
This meeting will mark the beginning of a new era in the
history of this loyal island of Lewis that you love above all
places on earth, and that L too have learned to love. So
great is my regard for Lewis and its people that I am
prepared to adventure a big sum of money for the develop-
ment of the resources of the island and of the fisheries.
Do you reahse that Stornoway is right in the centre of
the richest fishing grounds in the whole world ? The
fishmg which has hitherto been carried on in an old-
fashioned happy-go-lucky way is now to be prosecuted
on scientific lines. Recendy at Stornoway I saw half of
the fishmg boats return to port without a single herring
and the remainder with only a score of crans between

189

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

them. That is a poor return for men who spend their
time and risk their hves in a precarious caUing [ejaculations
of assent]. I have a plan for putting an end to that sort of
tiling [the crowd is eagerly interested].

' Tlie fact is, your fishing as presently carried on is a
hit or a miss. I want you to make it a hit every time.
How can I do that ? Well, every time you put out to
sea you blindly hope to strike a shoal of herrings. Some-
times you do. Oftener you do not. But the shoals are
there if you only knew the spot — ^and that is where I can
help you.

' I am prepared to supply a fleet of airplanes and trained
observers who will daily scan the sea in arcles round the
island. An observer from one of these planes cannot fail
to notice any shoal of herrings over which he passes.
Immediately he does so he sends a wireless message to the
Harbour Master at Stornoway. Every time a message of
chat kind comes in there is a loud-speaker announcement
by the Harbour Master so that all the skippers at the pier
get the exact location of the shoal. The boats arc headed
for that spot — and next morning they steam back to port
loaded with herrings to the gunwales. Hitherto, more
often than not, the return to port has been with hght boats
and heavy hearts. In future it will be with hght hearts and
heavy boats ! [Loud cheers.]

' I have already thought out plans which will involve
me in an expenditure of five million pounds ! But there
has been some discord between us ; we have not seen
eye to eye. When two sensible people have a difference
of opinion they do not quarrel : they meet and discuss
their differences reasonably and calmly. This is what we
have met for here today — and the sun is shining ! But
what do I propose to do with this five million pounds ?
Let me tell you. ..."

And then there appeared in the next few mmutes the
190

COLIN MACDONALD

most graphic word-picture it is possible to imagine — a
great fleet of fishing boats — another great fleet of cargo
boats — ^a large fish-canning factory (already started) —
railways — and electric-power station ; then one could see
the garden city grow — steady work, steady pay, beautiful
houses for all — every modern convenience and comfort.
The insecurity of their present income was referred to ;
the squalor of their present- houses deftly compared with
the conditions in the new earthly paradise. Altogether
it was a masterpiece ; and it produced its effect ; little
cheers came involuntarily from a few here and there —
more cheers ! — general cheers ! . . .

And just then, while the artist was still adding skilful
detail, there was a dramatic interruption.

One of the ringleaders managed to rouse himself from
the spell, and in an impassioned voice addressed the crowd
in GaeUc, and this is what he said :

' So so, fhiribh I Cha dean so gnothach ! Bheireadh am
bodach milbheulach sin chreidsinn oirnn gum bheil dubh geal's
geal dubh ! Ciod e dhuinn na bruadairean briagha aige, a thig
no nach tig ? 'Se am fearann tha sinn ag iarraidh. Agus
'se tha mise a jaigkneachd [turning to face Lord Leverhulme
and pointing dramatically towards him] : an toir thu
dhuinn am fearann ? ' The effect was electrical. The
crowd roared their approbation.

Lord Leverhulme looked bewildered at this, to him,
torrent of uninteUigible sounds, but when the frenzied
cheering with which it was greeted died down he
spoke :

' I am sorry ! It is my great misforttme that I do not
understand the Gaelic language. But perhaps my inter-
preter will translate for me what has been said ? '

Said the interpreter : ' I am afraid. Lord Leverhulme,
that it will be impossible for me to convey to you in
Enghsh what has been so forcefully said in the older

191

THE THISTLE AMD THE PEN

tongue ; but I will do my best ' — ^and his best was a
masterpiece, not only in words but in cone and gesture
and general effect :

' Come, come, men ! This will not do 1 This honey-
mouthed man would have us believe that black ts white
and white is black. We are not concerned with his fancy
dreams that may or may not come true ! What we want
is the land — and the question I put to him now is : will
you give us the land ? '

The translation evoked a further round of cheering.
A voice was heard to say :

' Not so bad for a poor language like the English ! '

Lord Leverhulme's picture, so skilfully painted, was
spattered in the artist's hand !

But was it ? When the cheering died down the brave
little artist looked round the crowd with eyes that seemed
to pierce every separate individual. Finally he fixed a
cold-steel look on the interrupter and in a clean-cut
staccato accent said :

' You have asked a straight question. I Uke a straight
question ; and I like a straight answer. And my answer
to your question is ' NO.' I am not prepared to give you
the land (here a compelling hand-wave that instandy
silenced some protests), ' not because I am vindictively
opposed to your views and aspirations, but because I
conscientiously believe that if my views are listened to — ^if
my schemes are given a chance — the result wiD be
enhanced prosperity and greater happiness for Lewis and
its people. Listen. . . .' And the indomitable litde
artist took up his work again in such skilful fashion that
in a matter of seconds he had the ear and the eye of the
crowd again — and in five minutes they were cheering
him again. . . . Theatre ! Play I

But the play was not yet over. A clean-shaven
aesthete — a crofter-fisherman — cut in pohtely at a

192

COLIN MACDONALD

momentary pause in the artist's work. He spoke slowly,
in English, with a strong Lewis accent ; each word set
square like a stone block in a building, and he made a
great speech.

' Lord Leverhulme,' said he, ' will you allow me to
intervene in this debate for a few moments ? (Assent
signified.) Thank you. Well, I will begin by saying
that we give credit to your lordship for good intetitions
in this matter. We believe you think you are right, but
we know that you are wrong. The fact is, there is an
element of sentiment in the situation which is impossible
for your lordship to understand. But for that we do not
blame you ; it is not your fault but your misfortune that
your upbringing, your experience and your outlook are
such that a proper understanding of the position and of
our point of view is quite outwith your comprehension.
You have spoken of steady work and steady pay in tones
of veneration — and I have no doubt that in your view,
and in the view of those unfortunate people who are
compelled to Hve their lives in smoky towns, steady work
and steady pay are very desirable things. But in Lewis
we have never been accustomed to either — and, strange
though it must seem to your lordship, we do not greatly
desire them. We attend to our crofts in seed-time and
harvest, and we follow the fishing in its season — and when
neither requires our attention we are free to rest and
contemplate. You have referred to our houses as hovels
— but they are our homes, and I will venture to say, my
lord, that, poor though these homes may be, you will
find more real human happiness in them than you will find
in your castles throughout the land. I would impress on
you tliat we are not in opposition to your schemes of
work ; we only oppose you when you say you cannot
give us the land, and on that point we will oppose you with
all our strength. It may be that some of the younger and
(769) 193 w

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

less-thoughtful men will side with you, but believe me,
the great majority of us are against you.

' Lord Leverhulme ! You have bought this island.
But you have not bought us, and we refuse to be the bond-
slaves of any man. We want to live our own Uves in our
own way, poor in material things it may be, but at least
it will be clear of the fear of the factory bell ; it will be
free and independent ! '

After a short silence of astonishment there came the
loudest and longest cheers of that day. ' That's the way
to talk, lad ! ' ' That's yourself, boy,' and such like
encomiums were shouted from all quarters. One voice
demanded to know what ' Bodach an t-siapuinn ' * could
say to that ? Nobody thought he could say anything to
that : the enemy was annihilated !

But we had yet to grasp the full fighting qualities of
this wonderful little man, and we were soon to see him in
action, at his very best. With a sort of magical com-
bination of hand and eye he again commanded a perfect
silence ; he then spoke in modulated, cajoling tones that
showed the superb actor.

Said he : ' Will you allow me to congratulate you ? —
to thank you for putting the views of my opponents so
clearly before me ? I did know that sentiment lay at the
back of the opposition to my schemes, but I confess I had
not adequately estimated the strength of that element till
now. My friends 1 sentiment is the finest thing in this
hard world. It is the golden band of brotherhood. It is
the beautiful mystic thing that makes Ufe worth Uving
. . . and would you accuse me of deliberately planning
to injure that beautiful thing ? No 1 No 1 A thousand
times No 1 Then is there, after all, so very much between
your point of view and mine ? Are we not striving after
the same thing ? — by different roads it may be, but still,

' The wee soap-mannie
194

COLIf* MACfJOKALb'

for the same goal ? We are both out for the greatest good
of the greatest number of people on this island. You
have admitted, that the young men may beUeve in my
schemes. May I again congratulate you ? The young
people will — and do — beUeve in my schemes. I have in
my pocket now (fetching out a handful of letters) quite
a number of letters from young men in different parts of
the island, and I have received a great many more of the
same kind — all asking the same questions — " When can
you give me a job in Stornoway ? " " When can I get
one of your new houses ? " These young men and their
wives and sweethearts want to give up the croft life ; they
want a brighter, happier Ufe. . . . My friends ! the
yoiing people of today wiU be the people of tomorrow.
Are the older ones who have had their day going to stand
in the way of the young folk ? Are we older fellows
going to be dogs-in-mangers ? No ! The people of
this island are much too intelhgent to take up so un-
christian an attitude. Give me a chance — give my
schemes a chance — give the young folks and give Lewis
a chance ! Give me a period of ten years to develop my
schemes, and I venture to prophesy that long before then
— in fact in the near future — so many people, young
and old, will believe in them, that crofts will be going
a-begging — ^and then if there are still some who prefer life
on the land they can have two, three, four crofts apiece ! '

And the crowd cheered again : they simply could not
resist it, and they cheered loud and long.

The artist knew when to stop. As the cheers died he
raised his hat and said : ' Ladies and Gentlemen — Friends
— I knew the sun did not shine for nothing ! This has
been a great meeting. This will be a memorsible day in
the history of Lewis. You are giving me a chance. I will
not fail you. I thank you. Good day.* And oflF he
walked to another round of cheering.

195

THE *rHISTLE AND THE PEN

I tried to walk off too — ^unsuccessfully. An eager
crowd surged round ' the man from the Board ' : ' When
will the Board be dividing off the land ? '

' You do not want the land now,' said I, well knowing
they did, notwithstanding the cheers.

' Want the land ! Of course we want the land, and
we want it at once.'

' But you gave Lord Leverhulme the impression that
you agreed with him,' said I, affecting astonishment.

' Not at all,' was the reply, ' and if he is under that
impression you may tell him from us that he is greatly
mistaken.'

' But why did you cheer him ? ' I inquired.

' Och ! well : he made a very good speech and he is
a very clever man, and we wanted to show our apprecia-
tion — but the land is another matter.'

Highland Journey

196

HUGH MACDIARMID

O Wha's been Here

O wha's the bride that cairries the bunch
O' thistles blinterin' white ?
Her cuckold bridegroom little dreids
What he sail ken this nicht.

For closer than gudeman can come
And closer to'r than hersel',
Wha didna need her maidenheid
Has wrocht his purpose fell.

O wha's been here afore me, lass,
And hoo did he get in ?

A man that deed or I was born

This evil thing has din.

And left, as it were on a corpse.
Your maidenheid to me ?

Nae lass, gudeman, sin Time began

'S hed any mair to gi'e.

But I can gi'e ye kindness, lad,
And a pair o' willin hands.
And you sail hae my briests like stars.
My limbs like willow wands.

And on my lips ye'll heed nae mair.
And in my hair forget
The seed o a the men that in
My virgin womb ha'e met. . . .

A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle
blinterin', gleaming
197

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Bonnie Broukit Bairn

Mars is braw in crammasy,

Venus in a green silk goun.

The auld mune shak's her gowden feathers.

Their starry talk's a wheen o' blechers,

Nane for thee a thochtie sparin',

Earth, thou bonnie broukit bairn !

— ^But greet, an' in your tears ye'll droun

The haill clanjamfiie !

Sangsdiaw

braw, fine, gaily dressed crammasy, crimson wheen, a number, quantity

blethers, nonsense, foolish talk broukit, dirty, neglected greet, cry

haill, whole clanjdmfiie, collection of people

198

COMPTON MACKENZIE

The North Wind

[Author's Note : The date of this scene is January 1931]

It was a small faded room, seeming all the smaller because
of the large sprawling patterns of the bluish-green wall-
paper ; and the gilt mirror over the fireplace had grown
so tarnished with age and tobacco smoke and sea-damp
that the interior dimly reflected therein added nothing
to the apparent space. On the wall opposite the door
hung a large steel engraving spotted with brown mould,
which represented a mythical Fitzgerald saving an almost
equally mythical King Alexander from the antlers of an
infuriated stag, and thereby gaining the favour on which
the fortunes of Clann Choinnich were supposed to have
been built up. Above this engraving hung a pair of
antlers mounted on a wooden shield, the Cabar FUdh of
the Mackenzies gained by the feat represented below.
Under the engraving was a diminutive and iU-executed
water-colour of Dunvegan Castle. The domination of
the Mackenzies over the Macleods thus symbolised was
an expression of Mistress Macleod's domination over her
husband the innkeeper, she having been a Mackenzie
before she married him. On either side of the engraving
hung a sea-trout in a glass case, to both of which time
had given a somewhat kippered appearance. The rest
of the pictures showed the stock sentimentalised scenes of
Highland life — sheep, shepherds, plaided lassies, shaggy
cattle, hills, lochs, birds and sunsets.

There was still one of the broken-springed armchairs
vacant, in which John sat down. From the sofa the face
of a minister, who was lying with feet up, feet from
which he had removed his boots and to which in default

199

THE THISTtE AND THE PEN

of slippers he had added a pair of thick grey woollen
socks, bobbed up above the Glasgow Herald to reveal a
ragged moustache, a complexion stained by excess of
tea as fingers are stained by nicotine, and a pair of dark
eyes inquisitive about the newcomer.

' Very cold,' he observed.

' Very cold indeed,' John agreed.

Then the moustache and yellow face and dark eyes were
hidden again by the Glasgow Herald, and John looked
round the room at the other guests.

Four commercial travellers had just finished their last
rubber of solo whist. Two of them who were rising
early to make the crossing to the islands went off to bed ;
but one of the two that remained, a fat rubicund man in
voluminous plus-fours of brown Harris tweed, came
across and offered his hand to John.

' I met you once, Mr Ogilvie, in the Station Hotel at
Inverness,' he reminded him.

' I remember very well,' said John, ' it's Mr MacDougal,
isn't it ? '

The fat man beamed.

' Look at that now ! Well, well, you have a very good
memory, Mr Ogilvie. You'll be meeting many different
people of all sorts and yet you remembered my name.
Well, well ! '

Mr MacDougal's companion, a slim, small dark young
man with slanting eyes alight with mockery, dug him in
the ribs.

' Och, go on, Seumas, who'd ever the hell be Ukely to
forget you ? Man, you're a feature of the landscape.'

' Isht ! Less of your swearing, Alasdair MacPhee.
There's a minister in the room. And you don't know
who this gentleman is ? '

' I do not.'

' This is Mr John Ogilvie, Alec. You're quick enough

200

COMPTON MACKENZIE

to blether about Home Rule for Scotland, but you don't
know Mr Ogilvie. Very good, very good 1 ' He
laughed a high wheezy laugh of triumph over his
companion.

* You're Mr Ogilvie the play-v\n:iter ? ' the dark young
man asked, and the mockery vanished for a moment from
his slanting eyes, leaving behind a burning, hungry look.
' Well, this is a bit of an unexpected pleasure for me,' he
murmured, it seemed more to himself, as he offered his
hand.

' There you are now, there you are,' Mr MacDougal
wheezed complacently. ' What would you do without
big James MacDougal ? You'd be nowhere at all at all.
Not that I'm very much for Home Rule myself, Mr
Ogilvie. What would we do without England ? '

' What would you do without your belly, James ? '
Alec MacPhee jeered. ' I'll tell you. You'd be driving
that Morris Junior of yours much more comfortably than
you can now.'

' I don't know so much about that, Alec. I might
drive her off the road altogether if I lost so much good
ballast.'

There was a general laugh at the fat traveller's retort,
for by now the rest of the company were paying attention
to the topic which had been raised.

' I've gathered from reports I've read of your speeches,
Mr Ogilvie, that you advocate something a great deal
more drastic than Home Rule in the usual sense of the
words ? '

This remark came from a lanky young man with a long
upper hp and light reddish hair, in plus-fours of a modest
Glen Urquhart tweed, seated in the comer by the fire.

' I don t think the Northern Ireland experiment has
much to recommend it,' John rephed, ' if that's what you
mean by Home Rule in die usual sense of the words.'

20I

tHE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Before the new speaker could elaborate his point a
bald burly man in a faded red kilt of the MacKinnon
tartan barked with the muffled woof of a retriever with
a ball in its mouth :

' Can't stand the idea of Home Rule. Sooner be ruled
by Whitehall than Edinburgh lawyers. You fellows in
the Department of Agriculture are bad enough already.
Don't know what life would be if you got the bit between
your teeth, what ! How are you, Ogilvie ? I think we
were up at Oxford about the same time. You were at
Exeter, weren't you ? I was at Trinity. Read a lot about
you, of course. Building yourself a house, they tell me, on
the Shiel Islands. You'U find it a bit lonely, won't you ?
Can't think what you'll do with yourself all the time.'

John shook hands with Major Lachlan MacKinnon of
Drumdhu, a Skye laird of authentic lineage, whose land
had managed to stick to him in spite of the fears he had
so often and so openly expressed ever since the end of the
war that it would be raided. There was a limit, however,
even to the appetite of land-starved men, and the barren
moors and bogs of Drumdhu were beyond its capacity.
Nor had Major MacKinnon been able to persuade the
officials of the Department of Agriculture to acquire his
inheritance. Even they whose optimism about land
suitable for crofts was almost infmite shied at Drumdhu.

While the laird was exchanging courtesies with John,
the long upper Hp of Mr Andrew Pirie, the representative
of the Department, lengthened in preparation for a
defence of Edinburgh.

' I'm not altogether prepared to accept your con-
demnation of Edinburgh lawyers, Drumdhu,' he said
when the opportunity came. ' I think it is generally
admitted that nowhere in Great Britain is the law more
expeditiously and more capably and more cheaply
administered than in Edinburgh. I do not agree with

202

COMPTON MACKENZIE

Mr Ogilvie's very extreme conception of Scottish Home
Rule, but I am bound to protest that one of the most
potent arguments in favour of a measure — n strictly
modified measure — of self-government, is the great, the
very great superiority of Edinburgh lawyers over any
other legal body in the world. Mind you, I'm not saying
that I accept such an argum.ent. I'm a Government
servant and therefore I do not consider myself at Uberty
to hold any positive political opinions.'

' A lot of dummies,' Alec MacPhee scoffed.

' That may be your opinion, Mr MacPhee,' the official
replied tartly. ' But I don't fancy it's the opinion of the
majority.'

' The majority is made up of sheep,' snapped MacPhee.

A white-bearded man who had been dozing in the
corner woke up at the magic word.

' The prices were terrible at Dingwall last autumn.
Terrible, terrible,' he groaned. ' Somethiiig will have to
be done by the Government or we will all be, ruined.
And that reminds me, Mr Pirie, I don't agree at all with
the idea the Department had about cross-bred Leicesters.
They're too heavy — too heavy altogether. . . .'

' We are not discussing sheep, Mr Gillies,' said Pirie.
' We're discussing Home Rule.'

The white-bearded man shook his head.

' Och, I think Mr Gladstone made a big mistake . . .
a big big mistake. I was a very young man at the time,
but I always used to say then that he had made a big
big mistake. Mind you, I've never voted for the Tories.
No, no, I wouldn't go so far as that. But I think Mr
Gladstone. . . .'

' You've lost fifty years since you fell asleep, Mr Gillies,'
Alec MacPhee broke in. He did not travel for an agri-
cultural firm and did not have to handle tactfully a
prospective customer. ' We're talking about today.'

203

tHE THISTLE AND THE PEN

' The Government will have to do something about it,
or we'll all be ruined,' the white-bearded man sighed
lugubriously. ' Och, well, I think I'D go up to my bed
now that I've woken up. Goodnight, gentlemen, good-
night.'

' There's one of yoiur majority, Mr Pine,' observed
MacPhee. ■

' Poor old Donald,' MacDougal chuckled. ' He's get-
ting very old. But mind you, he's all there still. Och,
my word, he's all there right enough. He gave me a
very good order last time I was over in Loch Maddy.
Now then, what about a dram, Mr Ogilvie ? Ring the
bell, Alec'

The host presented himself in the doorway.

' Three double whiskies, Mr Macleod.'

' I'm sorry, Mr MacDougal, but the bar is closed.'

' The bar is closed ? ' the fat man gasped. ' It's only
just twelve o'clock. Och, man, bring us four double
whiskies.'

' I couldn't serve you now, Mr MacDougal, the bar is
closed.'

The host withdrew.

' There you are now,' the fat man exclaimed, ' that's
what it is for a Macleod to marry a Mackenzie. She's
locked the bar on him right enough. Well, well, well,
isn't that terrible, right enough ? '

The host's announcement that the hfe of the hotel was
in abeyance broke up the gathering, most of the members
of which would have to be up again before five to go on
board the Puffin. The smokmg-room emptied. On his
way out the minister, who had been lying on the sofa
reading the Glasgow Herald, stuck the paper under his arm
that was carrying his boots and offered his hand to John.

' I'm glad to have met you, Mr Ogilvie,' he said in the
wind-blown accents of Lewis. ' I'm not a Nationalist

204

COMftON MACKENZIE

myself. No, I feel we cannot afford to break with our
southern neighbours. But there's room for improvement
in many directions, especially in the island of Lewis.
Yes, indeed. There's no doubt of that. We in Lewis
feel we've been very badly neglected by the Government.
I'm no longer living in the island myself. I accepted a
call to the United Free Church at Avonside. If you're
ever along my way I'U be glad to give you a cup of tea.
I've just lost my sister and I am crossing to Stornovray
tomorrow. I did not manage to catch the boat today.
There ought to be two boats a day to Stomoway.*

This was too much for a Harrisman, who turned back
indignantly in the doorway.

' Two boats a day for Stomoway ! ' he gasped. ' And
three boats a week is enough for Tarbert.'

' But, my friend, Lewis is not Harris.'

' Och, dhuine, dhuine, indeed, and I hope it never wiL
be,' the Harrisman ejaculated devoutly, and, with a
courteous goodnight in GaeHc that was given rather to
the collar than to the wearer of it, he passed from the
conversation.

' They're very much behind the times in Harris,' the
Reverend Duncan Morrison commented. ' Good people,
good people, but behind the times. Well, goodnight,
Mr Ogilvie. Oidhche mhath. Have you the GaeHc ? I
hope we will meet again. I gave you my card. I am
between Greenock and Glasgow. Och, you're perform-
ing a great work in calling attention to the neglect of
Scotland, Mr Ogilvie. I thought Mr Ramsay MacDonald
would have tried to do a little more for his own country,
but the world has corrupted him, they tell me. Anyway,
he should bestir himself Well, I hope we will meet
again, Mr Ogilvie. Goodnight.'

Presently die only guests left in the smoking-room
were Andrew Pirie, Alec MacPhee and John.

205

THE THISTLE AND THE ^EN

' You're not going to bed just yet, Mr Ogilvie ? ' tte
slant-eyed young traveller asked with a touch of eagerness.

' I haven't a bed to go to,' John repUed. ' So I shall
stay here.'

' You haven't a bed ? Och, that's not good enough.
You'll take mine, Mr Ogilvie.'

' I wouldn't dream of it.'

' I have no room either,' the Department of Agriculture
official put in. ' I don't remember when the hotel was
so fuU.'

' You can have my room, Mr Pirie,' MacPhee
suggested quickly. ' Go on, man, take it,' he urged
when the official hesitated. ' I want to talk poUtics with
Mr Ogilvie. I'll stay on in here anyway for a while if
Mr Ogilvie has no objection. You'd better take my
room.'

The notion of tolerable comfort for a few hours was
more than Pirie could resist. Moreover, he had the dread
every good civil servant has of fmding himself involved
in extremist politics of any kind.

' I hope you don't mind me pushing myself upon your
company like this ? ' MacPhee asked when the repre-
sentative of the Department of Agriculture had departed
to the bed he had surrendered to him. ' But I couldn't
let go of a chance like this, and I knew fme you might
not hke to take part in a general argument. Look now,
let me pull up yon sofa in front of the fire and you can
lie back and make yourself fairly snug. I'll put a couple
of armchairs together for myself.'

The younger man heaped more coal on the fire, moved
the furniture around, and presently came back from an
expedition into the domestic fastnesses of the hotel with
pillows, a couple of plaids and two brimming glasses of
hot grog.

' Yon woman's a terror,' he affirmed. ' But my
206

COMPTON MACKENZIE

mother was a Mackenzie from the Black Isle like herself,
and I know the way with that same clan.'

' ^y great-grandmother was a Macleod from Assynt,'
John told him.

' You're like me then, east and west. My father was a
MacPhee of CoU, but I was born in Inverness myself.
But that's not what I wanted to teU you, Mr Ogilvie.
What I wanted to say was " Go ahead, man." I'm a
member of the Party. I've been a member for three
years, but we're too slow. " Ca' canny " may be a good
slogan for business, but it's no slogan at all for a country
that's dying from the top down. And you know that.
Weren't they all dead men blethering away in here
tonight ? I never heard you speak in public, but I've
read all you've written about NationaHsm and I know
you're right when you say that it's too late to talk about
Home Rule in terms of a plank on the Liberal platform,
and that Scodand must assert her sovereign independence
or perish as a nation. O God, man, isn't it you that's
right ? '

' I think I am,' John agreed. ' But the problem is
whedier there's vitality enough left to feed the nation
with the courage and endurance to assert those sovereign
rights. So much of our Nationalist propaganda has been
concentrated on telling people that if we managed our
own affairs we should manage them more profitably ;
but there's no vision of true independence inspiring such
an argument. When you press that kind of Nationalist
you find he's using a municipal drain-pipe as a telescope
for the future. His Scottish Parliament is hardly more
than a glorified County Council. He's not prepared to
sacrifice half a crown, much less imperil his own liveli-
hood. And if he's not willing to face material loss he's
right to be canny. I believe that the kind of independence
a few of us dream of would involve ten and perhaps

207

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

twenty years of hardship and bitter self-denial. I believe
that any such complete separation from England as those
few of us dream of would for a long while be fatal to all
prosperity except the prosperity of the nation's soul.
Those who contend that the maintenance of the Union
is more than ever necessary at a time when the economic
trend is toward amalgamation, and when industry beUeves
that the secret of success is rationaUsation — foul word for
a foul process — are justified from their point of view.
It maddens me to hear those sentimental Nationahsts
moaning about the flight of industry to the south, and
hoping to check it by artificial legislation from Edinburgh
instead of Westminster. Nothing can stem that flight of
industry except so radical a readjustment of the economic
life of this country as would involve not merely separation
from England but probably even withdrawal from the
Empire and any further subjection to Anglo-American
finance.'

' Not even you would advocate that on a public
platform,' said MacPhee.

' I've always asserted that it was a mistake to fetter die
Party's declaration of its aims with the proviso that the
country's sovereign independence was to be sought only
witliin the British Commonwealth of Nations.'

' Scotland never would go out of the Empire.'

' Probably not,' John agreed. ' But it would be more
logical to leave that decision to a free Scotland. I object
for the same reason to this demand for a programme.
It turns us into one mere poUtical party. If we have no
confidence that sovereign independence will improve the
re-creation of our national Hfe, sovereign independence is
not worth winning. But as I said just now, the doubt
always at the back of my mind is whether the vitality is
really there, whether it is not too late. Tell me, MacPhee,
why do you think independence worth winning ? '

208

COMPTON MACKENZIE

' Didn't you say just now that it would be soon enough
to say why when we were after winning it ? '

' Ah, that didn't mean I haven't my own vision of a
free Scotland,' John replied. ' The point I was making
was that we could not afford to present the country with
a compromise programme designed to please the greatest
number of people and so win their votes. Let me put it
this way — if tomorrow you were offered a job in London
with a salary of a thousand a year and the prospect of a
certain steadily rising income, would you take it ? '

The younger man pitched the stub of his cigarette into
the fire as if with it went a part of himself

' I suppose I would.'

' You wouldn't feel that such a surrender of your own
independence made it rather ridiculous to worry any
more about the independence of your country ? '

' I wouldn't want to go to London, but what kind of a
chance Hke that would I ever find in Scotland today ? '

' In a Scotland that cut itself off completely from
England you mighm't be able to earn even half of what
you're earning in it today.'

' May I ask you a question, Mr Ogilvie ? '

' Ask away,' John told him.

' If the independence of Scotland meant that never
another play of yours was put on the stage in England,
would you still work for that independence ? '

' I've asked myself that question and I think I can say
" yes " with complete conviction. But our two cases are
not really similar. I have the advantage, because in the
first place an artist always has at any rate a little more
personal independence than a man on a salary, and in the
second place — how old are you ? '

' I'm twenty-two.' *

' I shall be fifty in October next year. I have enjoyed
my economic opportunity. But thirty years ago on the
<?M) 209 1*

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

last day of the nineteenth century old Torquil Macleod
of Ardvore told me that I ought to settle in Assynt and
devote myself to working to preserve the old Highland
habit of Ufe and way of thought. Perhaps if he had
encouraged my political views, which were then very
much what they are today, I might have thought his
suggestion less impractical. But old Ardvore abhorred
the notion of Home Rule, and as for separation he
thought it merely fantastic. For him Home Rule was
synonymous with radicalism, and to a Highland laird of
thirty years ago radicahsm sounded as unpleasant as
socialism sounds today. I don't have to tell you that the
profound opposition to the national movement among
the lairds and business men of Scotland is entirely inspired
by a fear of sociahst experiments at the expense of their
pockets. Our friend Drumdhu declared just now that
Home Rule would mean the Highlands being ruled by
Edinburgh lawyers, and he prefers Whitehall. Mind
you, I think there's a good deal to be said for that point
of view. Well, to come back to what I was teUing you,
the notion of settling down in Assynt at the age of
eighteen to learn GaeUc, encourage homespun and pre-
serve the old GaeUc culture seemed to me an idle dream.'

' So it would have been if there was nothing left to
preserve it for,' MacPhee agreed.

' That's what I told Ardvore. He wanted me to take
a wife from our own people and bring up a large family
in the traditions of our race. I remember I told him 1
would only do that if the traditions of our race could be
practically demonstrated to the rest of the world. And
Ardvore said they had been practically demonstrated in
the building up of the Empire.'

MacPhee muttered an ejaculation of disgust.

' Oh yes,' John continued with a smile. ' I felt exactly
as you feel about it, because at that date I was just suflfering

210

COMPTON MACKENZIE

from the first violent reaction to the Boer War. You
can't feel a bit more strongly the reaction against the
mood of the Great War.'

' Do you know Glen Strathfarrar ? ' the young man
asked.

' That lovely wilderness ! ' John sighed.

' Two hundred men from Glen Strathfarrar fought in
the wars against Napoleon, fifty men fought in the
Crimea, two men fought in the last war, and if there's
ever another war there'll be none to fight in it from Glen
Strathfarrar. A dhia, the making of the Empire left
Scotland Hke a shot salmon. Small wonder you turned
your back on Ardvore's proposal.'

' And then I met Norman Maclver,' John went on.
' Did you ever come across him ? '

' The tailor in Melvaig ? '

' It's he tliat has the eyes to see,' MacPhee averred.

' He has indeed. It was from him 1 heard first of
Michael Davitt's idea that the Highlands and Islands
should throw in their lot with Ireland. But he argues it
is too late now to save the Gaidhealtachd.'

' It's not too late, it's not too late,' MacPhee cried.

' Yet you would take a thousand-a-year job in London,
Alasdair.'

The young man's eyes lighted up at hearing himself
called by his Christian name.

' Not if I thought there was a chance to give Scotland
back its hfe,' he declared.

' What witli ? '

' With my own blood if that would serve.'

A silence fell. The coal in the grate subsided, and
flames Ucked the sooty mouth of the chimney. John
looked back to the door of the inn in Lochinver and to
the thin January sunhght in which the old laird of Ardvore

211

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

was waving him farewell just thirty years ago. And anon
from the jolting omnibus he was watching the isolated
blue-grey shape of Suilven, snow-sprinkled on the
summit, recede and sink out of sight below the bleak
rolling moorland like, a ship below the horizon.

It seemed to him that now for the first time he was
beholding it again.

' Tell me about yourself, Alasdair,' he said, breaking
the silence.

' There's Uttle enough to tell. My father is a grocer in
Inverness. The idea was that I would become a minister.
My mother came from the only village in the Black Isle
where they keep the Gaelic. Her father is Alasdair
Mackenzie. He has written plenty Gaelic poetry. I don't
suppose you've heard of him ? '

' Wasn't he crowned bard at one of the Mods ? '

' He was.'

* I've read some of his work. A genuine poet.'

* A better poet than most of them, perhaps,' the grand-
son allowed. * But his poetry ran to religion; which is
why my mother was so set on my becoming a minister.
My own idea was different, and my career at Inverness
Academy was not very brilliant. I made it clear that it
would be a big waste of money to send me to Aberdeen
University. Luckily my elder brother Donald was already
in the shop, and I got a job as traveller for Loudoun
and Gray, the big Glasgow biscuit makers. Och, it's not
a bad job. It takes you into the heart of the country.
I cover the west from Lochinver to Mallaig v\dth Skye
and the Long Island and the Small Isles. I've just driven
through Glenmoriston and Glenshiel. It's great in the
winter-time. There's not much snow here in Portrose ;
but, maij, it lay deep in the glens. My Austin seemed
just a wee toy and myself a bairn's doll.'

' Are you a poet yourself? ' John asked.

212

COMPTON MACKENZIE

I have written some Gaelic verse, right enough. But
it frightens the An Comunn people. The Highland
Society is a very respectable body of men, Mr .Ogilvie.
They don't admit any violent pohtical emotion later than
the 'forty-five.'

* I don't think we must laugh at An Comunn too much.
The language would have been in a much worse way
without the work they've been doing for the last forty
years.'

' Och, what's the annual Mod now ? Just a society
function the success of which is judged by the amount of
money it makes. And anyway, what is the use of keeping
a language alive for a dying people ? Look round this
room, Mr Ogilvie. Doesn't it sum up the Highlands of
today ? That steel engraving of a legend which was never
worth beheving anyhow — a nineteenth-century piece of
snobbery spotted by damp and flies. That washy water-
colour of Dunvegan hardly fit for a schoolgirl's auto-
graph album. Those two sea-trout to catch the eye of the
rich sportsman and persuade him the hotel's bad food is
compensated for by the fishing obtainable in the land of
bens and glens and heroes. Those rosy maidens from the
lone shiehng who are smiling so sweetly because next
week they'll be meeting their friends again on the Jamaica
Bridge in Glasgow. And that meditative shepherd !
Ay, ay, meditating on the prices his hoggets fetched at
Dingwall last week. That's the reason for so noble an
expression of Celtic gloom and dignity. Land of bens
and glens and heroes ! What is it now ? Rabbits and
bracken ; Indian pedlars on bicycles hawking cheap silks
and French letters ; inshore fishing destroyed by EngUsh
trawlers ; unemployment ; education planned to make
good North Britons but bad Scotsmen, and to fill the
minds of children with the behef that a city man is a
bigger fellow than a countryman ; ministers without

213

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

scholarship and scholars without religion ; tinned salmon
and tinned lobster ; Midlothian porridge like clay and
Glasgow bread like chalk ; plus-fours, Government
officials, pink asbestos tUes, and me People's Journal.'

' Yes, but can't the same kind of thing be said about
England ? ' John suggested. * I'm not convinced — ^I wish
I were ! — that the independence of Scotland would
change these signs of what is called progress. I've been
rather disappointed by the way Ireland has developed
since the Treaty. It's rather too much of a not very good
imitation of England at present. The pillar-boxes have
been painted green, but their shape remains. And as much
may be said of their legal and financial and economic
system. They've all been painted green, but in truth the
shape was better suited to England's cruel red. True,
there's a censorship of books, contraception is officially
discouraged, and it is recognised that the Irish language
must prevail ; but the country has not shaken off that
air or faded provincialism wluch hangs over our own
country. Contemporary Dublin is more a metropolis
than Edinburgh, largely I think, because it was farther
away from Belfast than Edinburgh from Glasgow,
and therefore avoided the complacency about its ovm
superiority with which the nearness of Glasgow has
infected Edinburgh. Princes Street has always seemed so
obviously an authentic metropohtan thoroughfare com-
pared with Sauchiehall Street that Edinburgh people have
not noticed the rapid decline of Princes Street during
the last twenty-five years. I think Perth should be the
capital of a sovereign Scotland, Alasdair, and the King
crowned again at Scone.'

' Will a sovereign Scotland want a coronation ? ' the
young man asked. ' I think a sovereign Scotland must be
a repubUc'

' I should prefer an autocratic monarch until the
214

COMPTON MACKENZIE

country has emerged from provincialism,' said John. ' I
wish the Prince of Wales would give up trying to persuade
the people of these islands of their imperial destiny and
take the throne of Scotland, leaving his brother to rule
constitutionally over all the rest.'

' The Prince of Wales ! You're not serious, Mr Ogilvie ? '
' Perfectly serious. Scotland needs an autocrat, but
you can't expect so proud a coimtry to accept a Mussolini.
And the kind of revolution that's necessary in our national
life could not be carried out by foUovidng traditions of the
Enghsh Civil Service. That's the mistake they've made
in the Irish Free State. When the Treaty was signed the
civil servants threw down their pens and sat back to watch
the new State collapse under the administration of young
men in Fedora hats and Burberrys with an automatic in
one pocket and a packet of gaspers in the other. Un-
fortunately the young men picked up the pens with their
nicotine-stained fingers and proceeded to get on with the
job, and almost before they knew it, had turned into good
little bureaucrats. They had dyed the red tape green, and
though green tape may be better it remains tape and has
the same capacity for strangulation. Let me give you a
few of my ideas about the revolution I fancy for this
country, and if you agree with them you'll have to agree
that they couldn't be put into effect by a nation which
rehed on Parhamentary institutions. The whole world is
passing through a period of upheaval. It will be time to
return to Parhamentary institutions when the fires below
the surface are again quiescent.'

' Isn't that what's been happening in Italy ? '
' Yes, and so far the experiment has been in many ways
a success. The trouble there, however, is that Mussolini,
like all self-made dictators, must continually go forward
or run the risk of a reaction. If he comes to an end of
his capacity for useful internal reform he will have to

215

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

maintain his position by external aggression. Hence this
wearisome braggadocio in all his speeches about Italy's
mission in the world. If he were a truly wise and great
man he would retire from the helm now and restore to
Italy a free ParUament which would know how to profit
by the example he has set of constructive energy. That's
why I made the point about an autocratic monarch. He'd
run less risk of having his head turned by his own position.
In any case he could not hope to compensate for any
failure of internal reform by a policy of external aggres-
sion. Even if the spirit of the people of Scodand was
inclined in that direction their geographical situation
would make such ambitions absurd. Obviously Scotland
would be no more hkely to contemplate aggression than
Norway, and it would have to make every eflfort to
achieve self-sufficiency.'

' To feed ourselves in fact,' Alasdair observed.

' That first of all, of course,' John agreed. ' And it
would involve nationalisation of all the land as an im-
mediate first step, or as I should prefer to say the restora-
tion of the trusteeship for all the land into the hands of
the King, by whom the tenure of it would be granted on
a system of mutual obligation. Private ownership would
never be freehold, but so long as it was used for the
common good no man could be dispossessed of his
tenure.'

' What about the deer forests ? How could they be used
for the common good ? '

' Well, first of all we must admit that there are great
tracts unfit for cultivation ; but, as once upon a rime,
all sporting rights would again be vested in the King, and
it would lie with him and his advisers to decide what
was the best use to make of such land for the common
good. At any rate, the private sporting estate would
have to go, and the rights of all salmon rivers would have

2i6

COMPTON MACKENZIE

to revert to the trusteeship of the King. That salmon
would require protection is obvious, but not less obvious
is the protection required by our other fish. With the
support of Norway we should be able to secure the
thirteen-mile Umit for territorial fishing waters that was
to be asked from the North Sea Convention by the
Scottish Fisheries Act of 1896.'

' Eighteen ninety-six ? '

' Yes, and never put into full operation all these twenty-
five years through the opposition of the big EngUsh
fishing interests. We cannot afford to ruin the spawning
grounds to keep the cities of the south supplied with cheap
fish. We have seen our best herring market destroyed
because the British Government has had a quarrel with
the Soviets. We want Russian wheat in return for our
fish. The grass growing on the quays of Leith will not
make bread. But mind you, Alasdair, we'll have to eat
more oatmeal, and not this fine-ground Midlothian stuff.
Do you realise that you have never tasted proper porridge ?
Twenty-five years ago the wash that's served as porridge
now in Scotland would have been considered uneatable
even at a railway meal. Scots used to moan because they
couldn't get real porridge over the Border, and now they
all eat Anglicised porridge from the Cheviots to the
Pentland Firth. And we must grow more rye. The black
bread of Germany at which we scoff is worth ten times
that foul chalk-like Glasgow bread you mentioned.
That's fit for nothing except to make plaster tombstones
for its victims.'

' And all the people like it better than home-made
bread, amadain truaigh ! '

' Poor fools indeed,' John echoed.

' That's going to be a big problem. Whatever we
make of the land it will be hard nowadays to persuade
people not to leave it for the towns.'

217

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

' That desertion of the country for the cities seems a
world-wide tendency, and when country people cannot
escape from what they believe to be a prison they import
into the country as much as they can of city life. Hence
your tinned lobster and your cheap silks. I believe that
if transport were made free, or at any rate if the rates
were equalised on the same principle as the post, the
population would adjust itself much more equally. It's
not the time that tells against travel but the money it
costs. I would have sixpenny and threepenny electric
trains worked by our own water-power running almost
continuously night and day, and sixpenny boats from
the islands. And I would charge freightage by weight
and space only, regardless of distance. Of coiarse, that
would mean nationaHsation of the railways and all ferry
services.'

* Wouldn't that mean burdening the State wdth a huge
capital investment ? '

' No, because with the death of every holder of railway
shares his shares would revert to the country. The
original capital invested in railways h^s long been paid
back in interest. Furthermore, arterial roads would
have to be constructed along which people would be
prohibited from building.'

' And what about the fmance ? '

' The King's money should be the King's money again,
and of course all banks would have to be nationalised
and amalgamated in a Royal Bank of Scotland. I've a
notion we might require a double rate of currency — one
for internal and the other for external requirements.
The value of the latter would depend on our export.
For what the country consumed itself of its own produce
prices and wages could be regulated to encourage at once
producer and consumer. More or less what I'm advocat-
ing is what is called Social Credit — the creation of

218

COMPTON MACKENZIE

purchasing power for the commiuiity. Did you ever
read any of Major Douglas's books ? '

' I never have.'

' You'd find it worth while.'

' But what would we do about our share of the present
National Debt ? '

' I am afraid we should have to repudiate our share of
that, though I think it might be possible to make a fair
bargain by leasing our harbours to England, the harbours
I mean suitable as naval bases.'

' That would mean the Firth of Forth,' said Alasdair.
' A httle ignominious for the capital of an independent
Scotland.' '

' But Perth is to be the capital of my Utopian Scotland.
No, obviously one would prefer not to lease the naval
bases, but I don't see how England would get on without
them, and if war ever broke out again between England
and Germany it would certainly mean their occupation
by English naval forces, with all the tiresome compHca-
tions of violated neutrahty. I saw enough of that at
Salonica in 1915.'

' But wouldn't that drag us into one of England's
wars ? ' Alasdair still objected.

' No small nation can ever be safe from violation in a

general war. . . .'

The North Wind of Love

219

KENNETH BUTHLAY

The Salmon

I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street.

W. H. AUDBN

I GOT up on a Sunday morning

And I didn't need a beer,
For I could hear the music

And all the people cheer.

I knew there would be bus-loads

Of combined brass bands
And poUcemen cavorting on dolphins

And bunting festooning the stands.

I knew there must be magnolias

In all the charwomen's hair,
And the Provost of Auchinshuggle

Waltzing with a bear.

And gondolas meeting the buses

With cargoes of macaroons,
And beaver-crested guardsmen

Peddling in platoons.

And all the lovers diving

For jewelry and bouquets,
And oysters drinking Guinness

In flooded cabarets.

And a long-haired walrus conducting
With a most meticulous beat

For the rows and rows of salmon
Singing in the street.

220

KENNETH BUTHLAY

' O pink and spotted salmon,'
The people they would moan,

' O philharmonic salmon.
What purity of tone ! '

And after the salmon folksongs

In four-part harmony.
They would sing the great finale

Of the Choral Symphony.

Though the whole world were water

And the deity celluloid,
The salmon would sing triumphant

And Freude would conquer Freud.

But when I leaned out of the window

I heard no noble song,
But only the plaintive church bells

Admonishing the throng.

And when I walked into the sunlight

The sun was an evil star.
For I saw the Salvation Army

Marching forth to war.

The poke-boimeted Sunbeams

Were mobilising souls
With Torch-Bearer escorts

And illuminated scrolls.

With banners and with comets,
With blasts in brassy tones.

The Army went marching over
My heart on the cobble-stones.

221

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

I prayed for a singing salmon

Or at least a poetical cod,
But all I could see was a poster :

Thy God is a Jealous God.

And then I knew that the salmon

Had been and gone in the night,
And the Corporation Transport

Had removed the river from sight.

And. China and Africa also

Had been warned by a mutual friend
That the salmon had gone from the city

For love was at an end.

Scottish Student Verse 1937-47

222

GEORGE BLAKE

The Football Match

The surge of the stream was already apparent in the
Dumbarton Road. Even though only a few wore favours
of the Rangers blue, there was that of purpose in the air
of hurrying groups of men which infallibly indicated
their intention. It was almost as if they had put on
uniform for the occasion, for most were attired as Danny
was in decent dark suits under rainproofs or overcoats,
with great flat caps of light tweed on their heads. Most
of them smoked cigarettes that shivered in the corners of
dieir mouths as they fiercely debated the prospects of the
day. Hardly one of them but had his hands deep in his
pockets.

The scattered procession, as it were of an order almost
rehgious, poured itself through the mean entrance to the
subway station at Partick Cross. The decrepit turnstiles
clattered endlessly, and there was much rough good-
humoured jostling as the devotees bounded down the
wooden stairs to struggle for advantageous positions on
the crowded platform. Glasgow's subway system is of
high antiquarian interest and smells very strangely of age.
Its endless cables, whirling innocently over the pulleys,
are at once absurd and fascinating, its signalUng system a
matter for the laughter of a later generation. But to
Danny and the hundreds milling about him there was no
strange spectacle here : only a means of approach to a
shrine ; and strongly they pushed and wrestled when at
length a short train of toy-like dimensions ratded out of
the tuimel into the station.

It seemed full to suffocation already, but Danny, being
alone and ruthless in his use of elbow and shoulder,
contrived somehow to squeeze through a harrow door-

233

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

way on to a crowded platform. Others pressed in behind
him while official whistles skirled hopelessly without, and
before the urgent crowd was forced back at last and the
doors laboriously closed, he was packed right among
taller men of his kind, his arms pinned to his sides, his
lungs so compressed that he gasped.

' For the love o' Mike ..." he pleaded.

' Have ye no' heard there's a fitba' match the day, wee
man ? ' asked a tall humorist beside him.

Everybody laughed at that. For them there was
nothing odd or notably objectionable in their dangerous
discomfort. It was, at the worst, a purgatorial episode
on die passage to Elysium.

So they passed under the river, to be emptied in their
hundreds among the red sandstone tenements of the
South Side. Under the high banks of the Park a score
of streams met and mingled, the streams that had come
by train or tram or motor car or on foot to see the
game of games.

Danny ran for it as soon as his feet were on earth's
surface again, selecting in an experienced glance the turn-
stile with the shortest queue before it, ignoring quite the
mournful column that waited without hope at the
Unemployed Gate. His belly pushed the bar precisely
as his shilling smacked on the iron counter. A moment
later he was tearing as if for dear hfe up the long flight
of cindered steps leading to the top of the embank-
ment.

He achieved his favourite position without difficulty :
high on one of the topmost terraces and behind the eastern
goal. Already the huge amphitheatre seemed weU filled.
Except where the monstrous stands broke the skyline
there were cliffs of human faces, for all the world like
banks of gravel, with thin clouds of tobacco smoke drift-
ing across them. But Danny knew that thousands were

224

GEORGE BLAKE

Still to come to pack the terraces to the point of suffocation,
and, with no eyes for the sombre strangeness of the
spectacle, he proceeded to establish himself by setting his
arms firmly along the iron bar before him and making
friendly, or at least argumentative, contact with his
neighbours.

He was among enthusiasts of his own persuasion. In
consonance with ancient custom the pohce had shepherded
supporters of the Rangers to one end of the ground and
supporters of the Celtic to the other — so far as segregation
was possible with such a great mob of human beings. For
the game between Glasgow's two leading teams had more
in it than the simple test of relative skill. Their colours,
blue and green, were symbolic. Behind the rivalry of
players, behind even die commercial rivalry of limited
companies, was the dark significance of sectarian and racial
passions. Blue for the Protestants of Scotland and Ulster,
green for the Roman Catholics of the Free State ; and it
was a bitter war that was to be waged on that strip of
white-barred turf. AU the social problems of a hybrid
city were to be subUmated in the imminent clash of
mercenaries.

The Celtic came first, strangely attractive in their white
. and green, and there was a roar from the western end of
the ground. (' Hefty-looking lot o' bastards,' admitted
the small, old man at Danny's side.) They were followed
by a party of young men in Ught-blue jerseys ; and then
it seemed that the low-hanging clouds must split at the
impact of the yell that rose to greet them from forty
thousand throats. The referee appeared, jaunty in his
shorts and khaki jacket ; the linesmen, similarly attired,
ran to their positions. In a strange hush, broken only
by the thud of footballs kicked by the teams uneasily
practising, the captains tossed for ends. Ah ! Rangers
(768) 225 "

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

had won and would play with the sou'-westerly wind,
straight towards the goal behind which Datuiy stood in
his eagerness.

This was enough to send a man ofFhis head. Good old
Rangers — and to hell with the Pope ! Danny gripped the
iron bar before him. The players trotted hmberly to their
positions. For a moment there was dead silence over
Ibrox Park. Then the whistle blew, a thin, curt, almost
feeble announcement of glory.

For nearly two hours thereafter Danny Shields lived
far beyond himself in a whirling world of passion. AU
sorts of racial emotions were released by this clash of
athletic young men ; the old clans of Scodand lived again
their ancient hatreds in this struggle for goals. Not a man
on the terraces paused to reflect that it was a spectacle
cumiingly arranged to draw their shillings, or to re-
member that the twenty-two players were so many slaves
of a commercial system, Hable to be bought and sold
like fallen women, without any regard for their feehngs
as men. Rangers had drawn their warriors from all
comers of Scotland — lads from mining villages, boys
from Ayrshire farms and even an undergraduate from the
University of Glasgow. Celtic hkev^rise had ranged the
industrial belt and even crossed to Ulster and the Free
State for men fit to win matches so that dividends might
accrue. But for such as Danny they remained peerless
and fearless warriors, saints of the Blue or the Green as
it might be ; and in delight in the cunning moves of
them, in their tricks and asperities, the men on the terraces
found release from the drabness of their own industrial
degradation.

That release they expressed in ways extremely violent.
They exhorted their favourites to dreadful enterprises of
assault and battery. They loudly questioned every
decision of the referee. In moments of high tension they

226

GEORGE BLAKE

raved obscenely, using a language ugly and violent in its
wealth of explosive consonants.

Yet that passionate horde had its wild and hberating
humours. Now and again a flash of rough jocularity
would release a gust of laughter, so hearty that it was as
if they rejoiced to escape from the bondage of their
own intensity of partisanship. Once in a while a clever
movement by one of the opposition team would evoke
a mutter of unwilling but sincere admiration. They were
abundantly capable of calling upon their favourites to use
their brawn, but they were punctiHous in the observation
of the unwritten laws that are called those of sportsman-
ship. They constituted, in fact, a stern but ultimately
rehable jury, demanding of their entertainers the very
best they could give, insisting that the spectacle be staged
with all the vigour that could be brought to it.

The Old Firm — thus the evening papers conventionally
described the meeting of Rangers and Celtic. It was a
game fought hard and fearless and merciless, and it was
the rub of the business that the wearers of the Blue scored
seven minutes from half-time.

The goal was the outcome of a movement so swift
that even a critic of Danny's perspicacity could hardly
tell just how it happened. What is it to say that a back
cleared from near die Rangers' goal ; that the ball went
on the wind to the nimble feet of Alan Morton on the
left wing ; that that small but intense performer carried
it at hghtning speed down the line past this man in green
and white and then that ; that he crossed before the
menace of a charging back, the baU soaring in a lovely
curve to the waiting centre ; and that it went then like
a rocket ihto a corner of the Celtic net, the goalkeeper
sprawling in a futile endeavour to stop it ?

It was a movement completed almost as soon as it was
227

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

begun, and Danny did not really understand it until he
read his evening paper on the way home. But it was a
goal, a goal for Rangers, and he went mad for a space.

With those about him he screamed his triumph, waving
his cap wildly about his head, taunting most foully those
who might be in favour of a team so thoroughly humili-
ated as the Celtic.

From this orgasm he recovered at length.

' Christ ! ' he panted. ' That was a bobbydazzler.'

' Good old Alan ! ' screeched the young man behind.
' Ye've got the suckers bitched ! '

' A piece of perfect bloody positioning,' gravely
observed the scientist on Danny's left.

' Positioning, ma foot ! ' snorted Danny. ' It was just
bloomin' good fitba ! Will ye have a snifter, old fella ? '

So they shared the half-mutchkiti of raw whisky, the
small man poUtely wiping the neck of the bottle with his
sleeve before handing it back to Danny.

' That's a good dram, son,' he observed judicially.

Half-time permitted of discussion that was now, how-
ever, without its heat, the young man behind exploiting
a critical theory of half-back play that kept some thirty
men about him in violent controversy until the whisde
blew again. Then the fever came back on them with
redoubled fury. One-nothing for Rangers at half-time
made an almost agonising situation ; and as the Celtic
battled to equalise, breaking themselves again and again
on a defence grimly determined to hold its advantage,
the waves of green hurling themselves on rocks of blue,
there was frenzy on the terraces.

When, five minutes before time, the men from the
East were awarded a penalty kick, Dannys' heart stopped
beating for a space, and when the fouled forward sent
the bail flying foohshly over the net, it nearly burst.
The Rangers would win. ' Stick it, lads ! * he yelled

2,28

GEOKGE BLAKE

again and again. ' Kick the tripes out the dirty Papists ! '
The Rangers would win. They must win. ... A spirt of
whistle ; and, by God, they had won !

In immediate swift reaction, Danny turned then and,
without a word to his neighbours, started to fight his
way to the top of the terracing and along the fence that
crowned it to the stairs and the open gate. To the feelings
of those he jostled and pushed he gave not the shghtest
thought. Now the battle was for a place in the Subway,
and he ran as soon as he could, hurtling down the road,
into the odorous maw of Copland Road station and
through the closing door of a train that had already
started on its journey northwards.

The Shipbuilders

The Clyde

The Estramadura went down the river on the Wednesday
afternoon, and Leslie Pagan travelled with her.

He was busy and preoccupied while the tugs moved
her from the basin in their fussily efficient way. She was
still his own, and the more precious for being the last he
had in that kind. His heart was in his mouth when her
cruiser-stern cleared the pierhead with only a foot to
spare. He was haunted by daft fears that this winch
would not function and that bollard fail to hold the pull
of the tow-ropes. The extinction of a series of lights on
the promenade deck at one moment gave him the panic
notion that the dynamos had broken down. Knowing
well that the apprehension was excessive, he was haunted
by a sense of the fallibility of the intricate and inter-
dependent mechanisms of the ship ; her security, the
thousands of pounds of value she represented, resting
perhaps on an abraded inch of insulation on a mile or so
of electric cable.

229

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

As soon, however, as she was fair in mid-channel, her
head down-stream and her beautiful light hull towering
over the riverside buildings, he suddenly resigned his
creation to chance and the skill of the pilot. At another
time he would have been fretfully active until her anchor-
chain rattled over the Tail of the Bank, dodging now into
the engine-room, now up steel ladders to where the
steering-gear churned forward and back again with its
own queer air of independence, and then hurrying to
the bridge and the battery of tell-tale Ughts up there. But
now he did nothing, keeping in a mood of uneasy detach-
ment out of the way of busy men in overalls. He found
a corner for himself on A deck, well forward below the
navigating bridge, and in that retired position stood for
a long time — watching, as it were, the last creation of
his own hands pass forever beyond him.

It was in a sense a procession that he witnessed, the high
tragic pageant of the Clyde. Yard after yard passed by,
the berths empty, the grass growing about the sinking
keel-blocks. He remembered how, in the brave days,
there would be scores of ships ready for the launching
along this reach, their stems hanging over the tide, and
how the men at work on them on high stagings would
turn from the job and tug off their caps and cheer the new
ship setting out to sea. And now only the gaunt dumb
poles and groups of men workless, watching in silence the
mocking passage of the vessel. It was bitter to know that
they knew — that almost every man among them was an
artist in one of the arts that go to the building of a ship ;
that every feature of the Estramadura would come under
an expert and loving scrutiny, that her passing would
remind them of the joy of work, and tell them how many
among them would never work again. It appalled LesUe
Pagan that not a cheer came from those watching groups.

It was a tragedy beyond economics. It was not that
230

GEORGE BLAKE

SO many thousands of homes lacked bread and butter.
It was that a tradition, a skill, a glory, a passion, was
visibly in decay, and all the acquired and inherited loveh-
ness of artistry rotting along the banks of the stream.

Into himself he counted and named the yards they
passed. The number and variety stirred him to wonder,
now that he had ceased to take them for granted. His
mental eye moving backwards up the river, he saw the
historic place at Govan, Henderson's of Meadowside at
the mouth of the Kelvin, and the long stretch of Fairfield
on the southern bank opposite. There came Stephen's
of Linthouse next, and Clydeholm facing it across the
narrow yellow ditch of the ship-channel. From thence
down river the range along the northern bank was almost
continuous for miles — Connell, Inglis, Blythswood and
the rest : so many that he could hardly remember their
order. He was distracted for a moment to professionaUsm
by the lean grey forms of destroyers building for a foreign
power in the sheds of a yard that had dramatically
deserted Thames for Clyde. Then he lost himself again
in the grim majesty of the parade. There came John
Brown's, stretching along half a mile of waterfront at
Clydebank, the monstrous red hiJl of Number 534
looming in its abandonment hke a monument to the
glory departed ; as if shipbuilding man had tried to do
too much and had been defeated by the mightiness of his
own conception. Then came, seeming to point the
moral, the vast desolation of Beardmore's at Dalmuir,
cradle of the mightiest battleships and now a scrap-heap,
empty and silent forever, the great gantry over the basin
proclaiming stagnation and an end.

Even where die Clyde opened out above Erskine, vnth
the Kilpatricks green and sweet above the river on the
one hand and the wooded fat lands of Renfrewshire
stretching to the escarpment of Misty Law on the other,

231

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

the sight of a legend — FOR SALE — ^painted large on the
walls of an empty shed reminded him with the effect of
a blow that Napier and Miller's were gone, shut down,
fmished, the name never to appear again on a brass plate
below the bridge of a good ship. And he suddenly
remembered that there lay on his desk at the office a
notice of sale of the plant at Bow, Maclachlan's on the
Cart by Paisley. His world seemed visibly to be crum-
bling. Already he had been appalled by the emptiness
of Lobnitz's and Simons's at Renfrew, and the sense of
desolation, of present catastrophe, closed the more
oppressively upon him.

As they rounded the bend by Bowling, passing close
under the wooded crags of AuchentorUe on the one
hand and, as on a Dutch canal, past the flats of Erskine
on the other, his eye was taken by the scene ahead. The
jagged noble range of the Cowal hills made a purple
barrier against the glow of the westering winter sun.
Now he was lost for a space in wonder that this cradle
and home of ships enjoyed a setting so lovely. Through
the gap of the Vale of Leven he could see the high peak
of Ben Lomond, and his fancy ranged up those desolate,
distant slopes. But then the dome of Dumbarton Rock,
the westernmost of the chain strung across the neck of
Scotland, brought him to think of the mean town at its
base, and of Denny's yard in the crook of the Leven
behind it, and of the lovely, fast, small ships they could
bmld, and of the coming of the turbine. And another
yard there, Macmillan's, derelict.

Past Dumbarton, die river opening to the Firth, the
scene took on an even more immediate grandeur. The
sands of the Pillar Bank were showing in golden streaks
through the falling tide. The peninsxila of Ardmore was
a pretty tuft of greenery thrust out towards the channel.
Dead ahead lay the mouth of the Gareloch, backed by

232

GEOKGE BLAKE

the jagged peaks on the western side of Loch Long. A
man could almost feel the freshness of the open sea
coming to meet him over the miles of island, hill and
loch ; and LesUe Pagan marked how the fresher and
larger waves slapped against the sides of the Estramadura,
and could almost imagine that the ship responded with
quiver and curtsey to dieir invitation.

That openness of the river below die derelict timber
ponds of Langbank, however, is deceptive ; for still the
channel must run round the end of the bank and close
into the Renfrewshire shore. There are miles of waste
space there over the shallows, and Glasgow is more than
twenty miles away before a ship of size has more than a
few feet of water between her keel and the bottom.
Port Glasgow and Greenock look across miles of sand and
sea to the Highland hills, but the yards there must launch
their ships into narrow waters ; so that the man who had
built the Estramadura, scanning the shores, saw thereabouts
an even thicker crowding of berths than he had marked
on the upper reaches.

It was another roster of great names, older, more
redolent even than those that had become namely about
Glasgow with the deepening of the Clyde. Ferguson's,
Duncan's, Murdoch's, Russell's, Hamilton's. . . . Even
he could not be sure that he had diem right ; there had
been so many changes. Out on Garvel Point, under the
old marooned Scots mansion-house, stood Brown's — the
' Siberia ' of the artisan's lingo. There came Scott's East
Yard — was it not once Steele's, where the clippers were
built ? There came the Greenock and Grangemouth,
once the artisan's ' Klondike.' Then Scott's Mid Yard ;
then Caird's, the last of the lot — closed down. It was
queer to see how Newark Casde survived in its pink
grace and antiquity among the stocks and gantries.

Here history went mad — the history of the countryside
233

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

and the history of shipbuilding in fantastic confusion.
Here they had moved a sixteenth-century church stone
by stone that a yard might be extended, and with it
carted away the poor bones of a poet's love. This town
of Greenock, sprawling over the foothills of Renfrewshire,
had had its heart torn out to make room for ships. It
was as if a race had worsliipped grim gods of the sea.
And now the tide had turned back. Greenock's heart lay
bare and bleeding — for the sake of a yard that had never
cradled a ship since strangers, afire with the fever of
war-time, took it and played with it and dropped it.
Never again, in any calculation of which the human
mind was capable, would the Clyde be what it had been.
■ That was incredible, surely. The fall of Rome was a
trifle in comparison. It was a catastrophe unthinkable,
beside which the collapse of a dynasty or the defeat of a
great nation in battle was a transient disturbance. How
in God's name could such a great thing, such a splendid
thing, be destroyed ?

As they swung the Estramadura to anchor at the Tail of
the Bank, LesUe Pagan wrestled with this enormity. He
saw the million ships of the Clyde as a navy immortal
and invincible. Launches, yachts, tugs, hoppers, dredgers,
tramps in every conceivable shape and size, tankers,
destroyers, cruisers, battleships, liners, and now the largest
and last of them all, the Cunarder on the stocks at
Clydebank — there was notliing the Clyde could not do
in this business of ships. Out of this narrow river they
had poured, an endless pageant, to fill the ports of the
world.

Why had he forgotten,- passing Port Glasgow, that
John Wood had built there the Comet, the first effective
thing, using steam, of all ? Or, sailing by Dermy's, that
there were shaped the perfect historic lines of the Cutty
Sark ? The last, mightiest Cimarder of all up at Clyde-

234

GEORGE BLAKE

bank ; and here in Greenock Robert Duncan had built

the first — the Britannia, all of wood, a mere two hundred

odd feet long, only fit to cross the Atlantic in fourteen

days under the drive of her two primitive engines. (She

could have been housed handUy on the boat-deck of the

Estramadura.) He remembered — for the great stories

came crowding — how the name and tradition were

immortaHsed by that River Clyde, bmlt in Port Glasgow,

which carried the soldiers to the bloody and splendid

assault on the heights above V Beach.

But the story was to end, or so he thought in his

misery.

The Shipbuilders

235

DOUGLAS YOUNG

Fermers Deein

He turns awa firae life,
frae the sun and the stems,

wi hardly a word for his wife,
or a curse for his bairns,

forfochten wi rowth o strife
and man's puir concerns.

He's tyauvt wi kye and corn
and scarce thocht why,

aamaist sin he was bom.
Nou Daith stilps by,

ohn hope, faith, fear, or scorn,
fegs, he's blye.

A Braird o Thistles

stems, stars forfochten, worn out by fighting rowth, abundant

tyauvt, worked bard, been embarrassed stilps, stalks with long strides

ohn, without blye, cheerful, blithe

Last Lauch

The Minister said it wald dee,

the cypress buss I plantit.
But the buss grew til a tree,

naething dauntit.

It's growan stark and heich,

derk and straucht and sinister,
kirkyairdie-like and dreich.

But whaur's the Minister ?

A Braird o Thristles
236

BERNARD FERGUSSON

Across the Chindwin

I COULD not have had a more congenial set of officers.
Only three had seen service before : Duncan Menzies of
my own regiment, whom with much intrigue I had
secured as Adjutant ; John Eraser, who commanded my
Burma Rifles and was also second-in-command ; and
Denny Sharp, my Air Forc^ officer from New Zealand.
Dimcan had been the only platoon commander in my
battalion who was not wounded or killed in Tobruk ;
John had been taken prisoner by the Japanese in Myitkyina
in the previous campaign, and escaped, reaching India by
the Chaukkan Pass in the height of the monsoon ; and
Denny had fought in Malaya, escaping via Sumatra.
We were pretty mixed in origin. Two were ex-
regular N.C.O.s, three were undergraduates, two were
business men from Burma, a professional footballer, a
lad straight from school, a medical student from Liver-
pool, a land agent from South Wales, a civil engineer
from Yorkshire, a builder from Hertfordshire, a doctor
from Glasgow, a gentleman of leisure from Cornwall.
Duncan was the only one whom I knew previously ; our
acquaintance had begun one dark night in Tobruk when
he opened fire on me with a tommy-gun and a Bren-gun
as I came in off patrol. Tliis was, of course, a great link
between us. He and John were my intimates and my
stalwarts ; I had no secrets from them, and they made a
team which can never have been bettered. We had the
same tastes, the same views, the same sense of humour,
and were all Scots (though Duncan was a Rhodes Scholar
from South AustraUa) ; and, if I may mix metaphors,
although we hved cheek by jowl we always saw eye
to eye.

237

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Among the new arrivals was a youthful Punjabi
Mussulman armourer caUed Abdul. He answered vari-
ously to Abdul the Armourer, Abdul the Bulbul or
Abdul the Damned. He turned out to be a stout fellow,
and as armouring was hardly a whole-time job Duncan
made him his syce. From then on it was a question which
he adored most — Duncan or the horse.

Our march began at railhead, and to avoid congestion
on the lines of communication we marched mostly by
night. Generals cheered us on our way, and the Com-
mander-in-Chief addressed us in a speech which we shall
not forget. As he walked round my column his eye fell
on his old acquaintance Peter standing sohd in the ranks,
and he said, ' Hullo, what are you doing here ? ' Peter
rolled a resigned eye on him and repUed, ' Just the same
as usual, sir — foUowin' the Major.'

On the evening of 15th February we left the roadheadi^
and a nightmare march over a shocking track brought us
into the Chindwin valley. I got my first view of the
'Jordan,' as it had come to be known, from a clearing
on the way down, where three of us column com-
manders sat and stared through glasses across the broad
river and the miles and nules of rolling jungle away to the
eastward. It was a solemn moment ; for one knew only
too well that many of the laughing high-spirited troops
following us down the hill would cross that river only
once. Often in Burma I thought of that view and looked
forward to the day when I should see it again ; but
although I eventually came out by that identical track I
never turned my head.

There was something of congestion where the other
columns were crossing, and as I was the last in the order
of march I asked and was given permission to try my
luck at a deserted village three miles farther up-stream.
With John and a small party of Burma Riflemen, and

238

BERNARD FERGUSSON

with Peter, I pushed on down to the river ahead of the
column by an even viler track than that by which we had
come, and an hour before dusk reached the bank. A
native boat happened to be passing, and we all hid
wliile Jameson hailed it. While John and his men made
preparations to receive the column, Jameson and I
crossed to the east side to find a spot suitable for landing
the animals and scrambling up the bank. As darkness fell
the column arrived, and I ordered a meal to be prepared
and eaten, determining to start the crossing at 9 p.m.

Nothing went right that night. The stream was very
swift, and the river five or six hundred yards wide ; and
every rope we tried to get across fouled a snag and stuck
fast. Using the native boat, I got Tommy Roberts's
machine-guns and mortars across as a bridgehead, but
the rafts which we had knocked up from the ruined houses
were too ciunbersome for easy handling, and could not
be got across without a rope. By four-thirty in the morn-
ing we were tired and discouraged, and I knocked off for
two hours. When we started again at half-past six our
luck turned, and from then on everything went well.
My two spot swimmers stripped and dived for the ropes,
and by seven the rafts were buzzing to and fro across the
river like shuttles. The work went on all day without
interruption, and soon after dark, with the exception of
two mules which had managed to get a rope round their
necks and drowned themselves, the whole column —
stores, men and animals — were in bivouac on the far side.

Astonishing as it may sound, there is practicaUy nothing
to record for the next fortnight. We played hide-and-
seek with strong enemy patrols, which always missed us.
Two passed within three miles of my columns within
twenty-four hours. We had two supply droppings for
all the columns in our group, each lasting three days, and
were not interrupted. At the second we got mail ; we

239

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

should have got it at the first as well, had not the pUot
concerned dropped it accurately on to some Japanese
instead of on us. Once I marched across a track between
a Jap patrol and the coolie party carrying its baggage. We
tipped the coolies not to tell the Japs they had seen us,
because, having got so far without being tumbled to, it
seemed a pity to give the show away. They accepted the
tip all right, but I doubt if they held their tongues.

At the beginning of March, when we had done about
a hundred miles from the Chindwin, I was detached from
the main body and sent off on my own to do a job for
which my column had been earmarked before leaving
India — the blocking of the Bonchaung Gorge, through
which runs the main line from Shwebo to Myitkyina.
One evening of pouring rain I received my conge from
the Brigadier, with orders to push ahead. I did so most
gladly ; for it was an irksome business being tied to the
others, and it is always pleasant to be on one's own. We
marched thirty-two miles with one brief halt, and then
turned eastward up a long vaUey which, owing to its
freedom from Japs and its general peaceful atmosphere,
We dubbed ' Happy Valley '. We went to sleep at four in
the morning on a wooded lull two nules from its mouth,
and did not wake until noon.

I had resolved, if I could, to blow the Bonchaung and
shp across the Irrawaddy without a further supply drop,
since I reckoned the country would get a bit hot for us
after the big bang. We had drawn seven days' rations
at the last supply drop on the 24th February, and I was
prepared to spin it out for ten if need be ; but everything
linged on how much rice we could get for ourselves and
low much forage for the animals. We found that mules
would cheerfully eat paddy and bamboo, and the horses
bamboo ; and although the horses went a bit off colour
the mules throve. In the Happy Valley we got as much

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BERNARD FBRGUSSON

rice as we could carry, thanks to the efforts of Duncan
and the Karen Subedar, who went on ahead warning the
villagers to prepare stuff for us. All was ready for a
dash across country to the railway.

A short easy day to recover from the long march was
followed by two marches of twenty-two and twenty-five
miles. The high pass at the head of the Happy Valley
was luckily not held, and on the night of the 5th March
we bivouacked only three miles from the railway. We
had collected the first of many woeful tales of forced
labour and of requisitioned foodstuffs, and gathered .the
welcome news that we were well inside the main Japanese
garrisons. Small posts existed in most railway stations,
and the line was regularly patrolled, but our information
was that the enemy was not really thick on the ground
in this particular area. The only definite news we could
get of his dispositions was of a post some eight miles south
of where I was camped, and another about twelve miles
north. The incredible truth was that we had arrived
within three miles of the railway, after marching for three
weeks through enemy-occupied country, vndiout firing
a shot.

I had supposed that we would have to do our fell work
(I always thought of it as ' fell work ' or ' nefarious
activities ') by night, and David Whitehead, my technical
blowing-up expert, had warned me that with the best
will in the world it would take half as long again. As
the opposition was apparendy going to be so slight, I
resolved to do it by dayUght. I went into a trance for
half an hour, and then emerged and gave my orders to
those concerned sitting round the fire. John Fraser with
half his Karens was to leave at dawn, cross the railway,
and reconnoitre the crossing of the Irrawaddy, some three
days' march away. Half my demolition experts, with a
platoon as escort, were to go and blow the Bonchaung

(766) 241 "

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Gorge on to the railway line. I myself would take the
main body and the rest of the demolition experts to
Bonchaung railway station and blow up the great bridge
there, of which we had plans, sending on the unwanted
mouths and animals to a bivouac in the jungle beyond,
where we would join them. Finally, aS it seemed a pity
not to let the Japs share in the day's high jinks, I thought
I would send Tommy Roberts, John Kerr and about
forty men to beat up the Jap post to the south.

That night, as Duncan and I lay by the fire, we dis-
cussed the incredible luck which had brought us within
striking distance of our main objective without inter-
ruption and with only one casualty — a man who had
fallen asleep at a halt and been lost. We agreed that what-
ever the outcome of the expedition we wouldn't willingly
be elsewhere, and Duncan quoted, ' And gentlemen in
in England now a-bed. . . .' Hoping that our luck
would hold on the morrow, we went to sleep at last.

At six in the morning John set off with his wireless set
and his Karens. The demoUtion experts spent the morn-
ing tinkering vdth their mysterious toys, and I ran through
the plan again. AU the parties except John's were to meet
me in two days' time on a small stream some thirty miles
away ; and any who failed to make it by a certain hour
were to carry on ten miles farther and meet me at my
rendezvous with John on the evening of the 8th or early
morning of the pth. All officers knew that I intended
to cross the Irrawaddy at Tigyaing on the 9th, if John's
information was encouraging. At eleven-thirty Tommy
and the demolition party set off together, since their way
coincided for the first mile to a certain village ; and I
was to follow an hour later to the same village, from
which a track was alleged to run to Bonchaung station.

I marched off with the main body soon after noon, and
at once met Fitzpatrick, a mounted orderly, galloping

242

BERNARD FERGUSSON

back Up the track towards me. He brought a message
from Jim Harman, commanding the gorge demoUtion
party, to say that Tommy had bumped the enemy in the
village and was fighting them ; and that Jim, quite
rightly, had avoided trouble and was making straight for
his objective with his escort. Not knowing the strength
of the opposition, but thinking that it wasn't likely to be
much, I still thought it better not to involve the main
body, so sent it across country to the station to start its
fell work, while I pushed on with a rifle platoon to see
how the scrap was going.

The fight was practically over by the time I arrived,
only one Jap light machine-gun still holding out, which
was soon silenced. Tommy had already gone on,
leaving only a small party behind. Fifteen Jap dead were
lying about, and four British, with another poor chap
dying. He recognised me when I gave him morphia.

Leaving the platoons to fmd a way for their animals,
Peter and I pushed on to the station. The alleged track
didn't exisf, and the going was atrocious ; even without
animals to cumber us it took two hours to do the three
miles. At last we slid through thick undergrowth into
the dry river-bed which we knew the bridge spanned
fartlier down. Soon we heard the chink of metal ; and
there, sitting on the bridge seventy or eighty feet above
our heads, were David Whitehead, Corporal Pike and
their assistants, with their legs dangHng in space. I stood
in the river-bed and shouted my news up to them, and
then went on to find Duncan and see his dispositions.

Four hours later, at a warning from David, we held
our breaths for the big bang. I had decided against wait-
ing for a train, dearly though I would have liked to catch
one just crossing the bridge ; for I knew that one Jap
had escaped from Tommy's battle, and also that Mike
Calvert and his column were raising Cain not far to the

243

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

south. It seemed on the whole unlikely that trains in
that neighbourhood would be tunning strictly according
to Bradshaw just then. So I told David to complete die
nefarious act : muleteers stood to their animals, I took
a new purchase on my eyeglass, and we. waited. David
had warned us that there would be two bangs, the first
a baby one and the second ' quite a big one.' The baby
was startling enough ; the big one five minutes later
must have been heard thirty miles off. John Eraser heard
it away in his bivouac by the Meza River, across twelve
miles of jungle and hiU ; Mike Calvert heard it far to the
south ; and Tommy Roberts and Jim Harman's detach-
ments nearly jumped out of their skins. The flash alone
was stupendous. In its Ught we saw the mules standing
among the bushes, loaded and ready to move, and the
tense faces of officers and men with their packs already
on their backs and their rifles in their hands, bracing them-
selves for the bang that was to follow. We had blown
the Bonchaung Bridge.

We waited twenty minutes while David crawled out
along the remains of the bridge to assess the damage.
One hundred-foot span rested with one end in the river-
bed ; the middle span of forty feet had been blown clean
from its piers and lay slewed across the sand below. The
piers themselves were torn and jagged ; altogether it was
a very gratifying affair, and even David expressed himself
as satisfied. We marched on down the track until we
met Alec's guides ; and just as we entered his bivouac
area, a minute or two before midnight, we heard another
terrific explosion followed by a sHding, shthering sound,
and knew that hundreds of tons of rock and soil had
fallen on to the line in the gorge. We flung ourselves on
the ground, and slept the grateful sleep of the successfully
nefarious until first light.

Next day we marched some twenty miles and forded
244

BERNARD FERGUSSON

the Meza River about three in the afternoon. There was
no news of Japs, although Aung Pe, the Karen Jemadar,
asked in every village. At about 4 p.m. I had got the
column wedged in a patch of jungle which, cut and slash
as we would, was utterly impassable for animals ; so I
made one of what Duncan used to call my ' weak
decisions,' and said, ' To hell with this ; we'll bivouac
here.' Next morning I sent Duncan and a small party
across to the rendezvous while I took the column and
animals round by a track. Tommy arrived soon after me,
and for the first time we heard his version of the fight
two days before. I waited beyond the allotted time for
the Gorge party, and then heard on the wireless from
John Fraser that they had aheady joined him at the
second rendezvous. This delay put back the programme
by twenty-four hours, and it wasn't till the evening of the
9th that I finally met John's guides and reached his
bivouac.

John's preHminary reports had been encouraging.
Tigyaing, where I had directed him to investigate the
possibihties of crossing, was a fairly large town on the
Irrawaddy shown on the map as a steamer station ; for
it seemed to me that the Japs wouldn't expect us to cross
at a town marked in nice big capital letters, but were
more likely to seek us skulking up secluded creeks. John
had told me on the wireless that the gamble looked like
coming off, and that he could hear of no garrison in the
town at all. Since then he had moved to within three
miles of it and sent in his spies, who confirmed his early
information and declared that there Were ample boats on
the water-firont. My only worry was that the enemy
should have devined our intention. John had by now
been in the area some time, and the presence and move-
ment of my party, Tommy's party and Jim Harman's
party could hardly have been unnoticed. Indeed, we had

245

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

all of US had to buy food ; for it was now five days since
we left the Happy Valley and fifteen since we drew our
seven days' rations at the last supply drop. However,
we had some reason to hope that at any rate our present
exact whereabouts were unknown, because we had moved
in after dark ; and all parties had been inducing the locals
to believe that we were bound ekewhere, by asking
searching questions about routes which we had no inten-
tion of taking. I pondered the prospects, decided they
were good, gave out preHminary orders for the crossing,
ate some rice and went to sleep.

Alas for our behef that our whereabouts were unknown.
The first thing next morning some local inhabitants
arrived with presents of milk, bananas and other good
things, walking straight into our sentries with unerring
direction. I received them graciously and gratefully,
although disconcerted, with Duncan murmuring in my
ear, ' Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes.' John suggested that
the sooner he was off the better. I agreed, and, taking
two platoons for bridgehead and cordon, he marched
into the town. An hour later a Jap aircraft circled over-
head and dropped a shower of leaflets, printed in EngUsh,
Urdu, Karemii and Burmese, addressed to ' The Pitiable
Anglo-Indian Soldiery,' telling us that all our forces had
been defeated in the great battle on 3rd March, and
that not a man had been able to recross the Chindwin.
We were to desert our cruel and selfish British officers and
hand ourselves over (carrying the leaflet) to the nearest
Nippon soldiers, who would treat us etc., etc. At the
same time they dropped another leaflet printed in Burmese
on the inhabitants of Tigyaing, telling them that we were
stragglers, and bidding them apprehend us and take us to
Shwebo.

I could not beUeve that the Japs would go to all tliis
fuss and bother if they were confident of reaching us in

246

BERNARD FERGUSSON

time to prevent our crossing, although the report which
John now wirelessed to me from the town that there were
fifty to five hundred Japs in Tawma (eight miles south of
me) was a Uttle disturbing. But John added that the boats
were collecting quickly, and a glance at the map showed
me that there were extensive marshes between Tigyaing
and Tawma which would take some Uttle time to
negotiate, so the show went on. All the same, the
tension, not to say the drama, was certainly mounting,
and it continued to do so all day until the excitement in
the evening.

At what I judged to be the right moment we left the
bivouac and marched to the town. I found my cordon
position to my taste, and marched through it into the
main street. All the inhabitants were out to see the fun,
and it looked as if we ought to give them value for their
money. So, liaving sited machine-guns and mortars on
a commanding hiU that covered all approaches, I ordered
that all movements within the town should be carried
out in the best Buckinghs^m Palace guard style, that
marching^ should be in threes and rifles at the slope. The
otJy thing I could do nothing about was our beards, but
perhaps they would think we were some sort of Beefeater.
I aLso read out to the troops the leaflet which had been
dropped on them, because I thought it would do the
inhabitants good to see them laughing at it. I wasn't
disappointed. Finally, I made a stirring speech, explaining
that we were not the glorious reconquering British Army
this time, but that we had come in to kill Japs, to find out
what conditions were like (and we were appalled at them),
and generally to say, ' Cheer up ! the time will come.'

On the water-front John's second-in-command, Pam
Heald, looked something like a harvest thanksgiving.
He had announced that we wanted food, and that, unlike
the Japs, we were in the habit of paying for it. There he

247

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Stood, surrounded by rice, melons, potatoes, a hundred
and thirty-seven eggs, chickens, and two packets of
cheroots per man. He also bought as a private transaction
with (so he assured me) his own money two tins of
butter, two of Porage Oats, and one of tinned oysters.
I think they cost him twenty rupees each (about 27s).
The town appeared to have plenty of rice and cheroots,
but, like everywhere else we went in Burma, no luxuries
were obtainable (not even at these fancy prices), and all
shops other than rice-shops were pathetically empty.
Everyone was dressed in rags. Only in one village
outside Tigyaing was sugar to be found, and many had
no salt.

The crossing-place was from a sand-bank in the middle
of the river to which we had to wade. Here the boats
which we had commandeered (so that the owners could
not be accused by the Japs of helping us) were already
engaged in ferrying across the bridgehead platoon. The
rest of the troops and animals were disposed here and
there about the town and beaches with a view pardy to
defence and partly to the order in which ihey were to
cross. It was really a very pretty sight : the shining
varnished boats with high Venetian prows skimming
across the blue river laden with troops, with the powerfiJ
torsos of the boatmen heaving to get the best out of the
current ; the gold-tipped pagoda dominating the town
and sparkling in the sun ; the long line of men and
animals wading the shallows and stringing across the sand.
The water was as warm as tea, and refreshing to the
twenty or so naked men who were urging the mules into
the river, to foUow the boats which were towing them
across to the other side. The crossing-place was over a
thousand yards wide, and too far to swim them free,
although one or two of the wise ones followed their
friends across. Every animal was got safely across b the

248

BERNARD FERGUSSON

end, with the exception of John's charger, which ran
away and was never caught.

It was a feather in the cap of Bill Smyly, the animal
transport ofEcer, and others concerned that every mule
which crossed the Chindwin also crossed the Irrawaddy,
except for two killed in Tommy's battle and two more
which, wounded there, did not show signs of recovery
and were eaten. (In passing, let me say that mule meat
is good ; better than horse, and in my view better than
water-buffalo. There is no need to be fastidious about it,
and if anybody ever tries to enHst your sympathy by
saying that he had to eat mule, you will be quite justified
in withholding it. He won't have done so badly.)

Things had gone famously, and by dusk only about
forty men and the last half-dozen recalcitrant animals
were left after three hours' work, the most ambitious
crossing we had ever done proving the most expeditious
as well. But just at sunset the watching crowd on the
river wall across the shallows suddenly dispersed, and all
the boatmen ran away. Two crews we managed to
retain at the point of the revolver. The symptoms were
only too clear : they meant Japs. John extracted from
them that two hundred Japs were marching up our bank
firom the southward. At this moment somebody on the
far bank chose to send a message through the signal lamp
which I had estabhshed on the far bank earlier in the
day. Then the infinitesimal spark had done valuable work
without being visible, except to the watchful terminal
on my side ; now in the dusk the flashing Ught broadcast
to the whole world the news that we were crossing. In
vain my terminal signalled, ' Stop ! Shut up ! You are
ordered to close ! ' For twenty minutes the unlucky
lamp went on flashing until to my tormented eyes it
looked like the red glare on Skiddaw rousing the burghers
of Carlisle ; it might almost have been visible from there.

249

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

At last the next boat-load across stopped it, but not before
the damage had been done.

With only the last two crews to work the boats — the
current was too tricky for amateurs, though a crew of
KarensAnanaged to fetch up somewhere on the far side,
half a mile down-stream— the httle knot of men and the
last few animals still waiting on the beach gradually
dwindled. Each boat held about six besides the crew,
but if animals were to be towed the freeboard was not
great enough to make the boat's trim secure agamst their
struggles. Not expecting this sudden reduction m the
rate of crossing, I had withdrawn the last of my cordon
and machine-guns. All I had to protect me was a couple
of Brens sited on the sand-bank and pointing towards
the shore. Before the last of the Ught had gone, a Jap'
reconnaissance plane, an Army 97, flew over us at five or
six hundred feet. It seems incredible that it did not see
us, even though we all firoze and tried to look like Jetsam ;
but there was practically no light left, and at all events it
didn't open up.

At last all the animals were across except John's charger,
which had taken Sight at the aircraft and run away into
the dusk towards the town. Nelson, his Karen groom,
had gone after it ; the Sergeant-Major, Peter, and a hand-
ful of others had got into the last boat but one ; the lasi
of all was Just approaching the beach under an armed
guard of one Karen. Duncan, John, the Karen Colour-
Sergeant, Nelson, and I were positively the only people
still on the beach, and I had Just said, ' This is where
General Alexander makes his fmal tour of the beaches to
make sure that not a single British soldier is left ! ' when
from the southern outskirts of the town Ught machine-
guns, and if my memory is correct a mortar, opened fire
on us. Nelson came haring back through the darkness.
The approaching boat hesitated, but the Karen guard

250

BERNARD FERGUSSON

pointed his rifle at the oarsmen, and it grounded a few
yards out. The Sergeant-Major shouted for permission
to push off, which I naturally granted, though he still
insisted on being assured that we were all right before he
would go ; and ' General Alexander's ' party waded out
and embarked. I was the least lucky ; I was afraid that
the boat, laden to the gunwales as it was, might stick,
and pushed it out till I was waist deep, forgetting that
Peter had been filling my pack with good diings all after-
noon, and that it now weighed fully a ton. I got my
elbows on to the gunwale, but couldn't heave myself
aboard until Nelson and Po Po Tou, the Colour-Sergeant,
hauled me in by the scruff of my neck and the underside
of my pack, and deposited me in a kneeling position on
a thwart, with my head under the matting canopy, and
the boat half-full of water.

There followed a most uncomfortable crossing. When-
ever I tried to shift to a more comfortable position, the
boat rolled again, and more water came over the side.
I couldn't see a thing — ^not the other boat, nor the flashes
from the Jap Ught machine-guns, nor how we were
getting on ; I had cramp in my arms and legs, and my
head kept btmaping that infernal canopy. That fifteen
hundred yards of water was the most unpleasant bit
of boating I have ever done. Yet die thought kept
running through my head that I was probably the first
British oflScer ever to have crossed the Irrawaddy on
all-fours.

On the far side I found that Tommy Roberts — ex-
regular N.C.O. and splendid soldier — had organised a
first-rate defence in case of a follow-up : he was quite
prepared to fure on us in case we were Japs. There was a
slight hold-up while the last stores and mule-loads were
being sorted. In due course we found Alec's guides, a
little apprehensive about the sound of firing, not knowing

251

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

that it had begun too late to do any harm ; and so to bed,
after a busy day.

The next few days were dull ones of hard unprofitable
marching. I wanted to reach a secluded village in a
remote valley to have our long-overdue supply drop.
I was fairly confident that the Japs wouldn't be able to
trace us, having taken certain steps, of which the nature
is a trade secret. But the going was exceedingly bad.

For two or three days we had been unable to wireless
H.Q., failing to find them on the air at the prescribed
times. Before crossing the Irrawaddy, I had told tliem
that I hoped to have supplies dropped, in the secluded
village I have mentioned, on 12th March ; but what
with one thing and another I was behind schedule. On
the I2th we were floundering our way up a dry river-bed
when we heard aircraft overhead ; and a few minutes
later, for the first time since our crossing, we got H.Q.
on the air. They told us that what we had just heard
had been aircraft destined for us with supphes, and that
having missed the bus we must wait till the 14th. Irritat-
ing though this was, all of us were immensely cheered
to know that both H.Q. and the R.A.F. had our interest
sufficiently at heart to send us supphes ' on spec. * on such
a vague message, in case our wireless had broken down,
or some trouble had befallen us.

On the 14th we were duly at the prescribed place ;
and at II a.m. we were cheered by the sound of engines
heading towards us. Within a few minutes the first
welcome canopies had opened and were drifting down
on us. Accurately and regularly they floated down, all
m the right area ; and by noon mules and men had done
their work : five days' supplies had been issued to all
ranks, animals were eating proper fodder, and all of us
reading our mail. I had a letter from my regiment,
requiring an answer by return of post, asking whether I

252

BERNARD FERGUSSON

would come back immediately to take over second-in-
command ; Private Lumsden had a letter from a firm
of solicitors in Calcutta to say that his -aunt had left; him
eleven thousand rupees, and would he fill in and return
the enclosed fiarm. My father enclosed a cutting from
the local newspaper at home containing an account of the
unveiling of a memorial to the former minister of our
parish : this survived many changes and chances, only
to be made into cigarettes on our way out to India five
weeks later.

I had asked for a good many articles of clothing to be
dropped on us, and waited until the next afternoon for
them to arrive in a supplementary drop, but they didn't.
Again I had trouble in getting through on the wireless,
or I could have found out the position without this delay.
I eventually moved off at 3 p.m. on the 15th, and by bad
luck was spotted an hour later crossing a patch of open
paddy-field by an enemy reconnaissance plane which
continued to plague us during the next week or so but
never again spotted us. This and the two aircraft (unless
it was the same one) which had flown over us at Tigyaing,
dropping pamphlets and scaring John Eraser's horse, were
the only enemy planes we saw during the whole time ;
every other was British, a marked contrast to one's
experience in other campaigns.

There followed a week so unpleasant that I take leave
not to recall it in detail. Water was scarce, and had to be
dug for, which involved long periods of waiting until the
hole filled up with a muddy hquid which we had perforce
to drink. The heat was intense, and the shelter scanty,
for the trees were young and afforded Uttle shade. The
only Ufe which flourished was red ants, and they in
abundance. And lastly, for reasons which I cannot go into,
I could neither forage nor have a supply drop, so that
the five days' rations we got on the 14th had to last us

253

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

till the 23 rd. We had been hungry before the drop on the
14th, but we were worse now. Perhaps it was as well
we didn't realise that we would be very much worse yet.

There were one or two pleasant incidents all the same.
After a long period of drouth we came to a stream with
18 in. of water, and we all bathed. One of my Karens
saw a Jap patrol, and although by himself flung two
grenades into it before beetling off; he was one and
they were fifty. Two more reported a Jap garrison in
a certain village ; we whistled up the R.A.F. and they
got their kail through the reek within a few hours. And
we bumped another column who had crossed the Irra-
waddy south of us, had had the super-supply drop of all
time, and were eating tinned fish and bread-and-butter
pudding. These were the first alUes we had seen for
twenty-two days.

Hearing that (for perfectly good reasons) I couldn't
have another supply drop till the 23 rd, I sent a wireless
message to the Brigadier : ' O.K. ; but see Psalm 22,
verse 17.' (' I may tell all my bones : they look and stare
upon me.') I got no cliange out of him : only a reference
to ' It is expedient that one should die for the people.'
I was amused at this, but wasn't sure that my entourage
would be, and substituted some innocuous reference for
pubhc consumption.

Unfortimately when the 23 rd at last arrived, the supply
drop went wrong in that one of the aircraft bringing food
failed to take off (as I afterwards discovered) ; and instead
of the ten days' food for which I had asked we got only
three. Some of us had had nothing to eat for two days,
and all had starved at least for one, so this was a grave
disappointment. Even so, however, we had something
to laugh at : a shower of silver coins which descended
on our heads, followed more slowly by a torn bag
attached to a parachute with a note tied to it, which read :

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BERNARD FERGUSSON

' Enclosed please find Five Thousand Rupees.' An hour's
diligent search in the jungle produced most of it.

My orders were now to rendezvous with Brigade
Headquarters, which, together with other columns, was
some thirty miles north of me. We did a bit that night,
slept and went on at moonrise. At nine next morning
we heard the sound of a brisk battle, and knew that some
of our chaps were having a scrap. We pushed on, but the
going was worse than I had hoped when giving a forecast
of what time I could arrive ; so I told the column to
make for a certain stream where I hoped they would fmd
water, and went on to the rendezvous myself, with Heald
and an escort of Karens, leaving the column to follow
under John. I told them that if I hadn't got back to diem
on their stream by four o'clock the following morning
they were to push on to another river-bed ten miles
farther north, where I would meet them ; and with that
I went ahead.

I failed to find anyone waiting for me at the rendezvous
(or what I took to be the rendezvous) ; so telling Pam
Heald to go on watching for them, I went back to the
stream where I had arranged to meet the column. I gave
Pam similar instructions : to wait until eight the next
morning, and then to push on to the next rendezvous,
where we would all join up. Confident that I would
find the column, I took no map with me, although I
studied Pam's for ten minutes before I left ; my own I
had left with Duncan. Like a fool also, I had come on
' light,' leaving my pack and all my rations on my horse.
Taking Jameson, my faithful Karen interpreter, I said
goodnight to Pam ; and at about 9.30 p.m. left for the
column rendezvous four miles to the southward.

If the night which followed wasn't the nastiest of my
Ufe, I am at a loss to know which can have been worse.

Poring mentally over the map which I had studied,
255

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

I marched due south by compass till I hit the stream which
I beheved to be the one I had given as Rendezvous. Then
I turned east along it to find the confluence, marked large
and generous on the map, which I had given as pin-point.
I found a place where the stream ran into a marsh, but
that was all. No marsh had been shown on the map :
I couldn't remember one within twenty miles. I at once
developed that sinking feeling in the stomach which
I associate with Paddington Station and going back to
school. Was I on the right stream, and was I far enough
along it ? I pushed down it for a mile, the most atrocious
going, through prickly bamboo, the greatest scourge of
Burma jungle, and then retraced my steps. The meeting-
place just couldn't be so far east as that, and there was no
other confluence of the requisite size. Therefore, I
reasoned, I must be on the wrong stream, and the right
one must be fartlier south.

I returned to the spot where I had hit the stream, and
started off due south. I crossed various ridges, but had
marched an hour and more before I reached a watershed,
and although I thrust on downhill until I reached the
main stream I was perfectly certain that I was much too
far south. So I turned and went back to the first stream,
turned east along it again to see if there was anyone at the
marsh, and again drew a blank. It was now close on four
o'clock, the hour at which I had told the column to
move ; and I could picture them rousing up, rubbing
their eyes, and loading up the animals. What other
chukkers I took I cannot remember ; but I know I went
back a good two miles to the westward to see if there was
a suitably prominent confluence there. There wasn't.

Dawn was now breaking, and I had two hours to get
back to Pam. I returned to what I thought was the spot
where I had first hit the stream, but Jameson and I couldn't
agree on where it was. Tliis shook me a lot, because the

256

BERNARD FERGUSSON

Karens are normaUy fer better than I in jungle. I gave
him his head at first, but after half a mile I was convinced
he was wrong, and indeed he himself looked anything
but confident. We went back to my starting-point, as
opposed to his, and went off on a bearing of due nprth.
I had no map, and my study of Pam's before leaving had
not included the country round the new rendezvous : I
had not the vaguest idea of how to get there. The
country we were going through seemed to bear not the
sHghtest resemblance to our route of last night ; it was
thick as the devil, and we had to slash a track where I was
positive we had been able to walk free the night before.
Jungle seen in the evening, with, the shadows all stretching
eastward, looks very different to the same jungle next
morning, when they stretch west. Jameson was despon-
dent and pessimistic, and so was I ; it was seven o'clock,
Pam was also due to move shordy, and we were very
weary. I reckoned we had done twenty-two miles since
leaving Pam, and we had marched all the previous day
and much of the previous night. And we were jolly
hungry.

At a quarter to eight Jameson and I struck a jungle
mere ; and as we were arguing whether or not we had
seen it the night before, we heard the unmistakable
crashing sound of troops marching through teak jungle.
Thirty seconds later we saw our column converging on
us ; and at the same moment Pam popped his head
through the bushes on our other flank. I have never
been more aware of God's mercy.

They, too, had failed to find die alleged confluence,
and had had patrols up and down the same stream all night
long. Duncan himself had walked rmles in the effort to
find me, but our various visits to the marsh and the
stream had failed to coincide. The point where we
eventually met was only five hundred yards firom Pam,

(7M) 257 ^*

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

one of whose sentries had reported the approach of
unidentified troops, and about three miles from the
non-existent confluence. I ordered an immediate halt
for the benefit of myself and Jarheson, and had a breakfast
of two biscuits (all I could afford) and an hour's sleep
beforfe pushing on.

While I was sleeping Duncan got a new rendezvous
out of H.Q. on the wireless ; and next morning, having
picked up one day's rations which they had left for us,
we walked in on H.Q. and its attendant columns an hour
after dawn. It was twenty-six days since we had last
seen them, and we had a great reunion. I reported to the
Brigadier, and spent the rest of the day having a sleep.

The decision had now been taken to return to India.
Our principal objects had been achieved : we had blown
the railway (Mike Calvert had done so in something Uke
seventy places), gained a great mass of valuable intelli-
gence, and got the Japs marching and counter-marching
furiously in all directions. But the blow about returning
to India was the necessity of abandoning the bulk of our
mules and equipment. They had served their purpose,
and would now be a hindrance rather than a help ; but
it was a wrench all the same, and poor Bill Smyly went
about with a long face at the thought of leaving the
faithful animals whom he had nursed all the way from
India. Yet it had its advantages in that our rate of move-
ment was much greater than it could possibly have been
had they all been coming with us. Oiu: hand would have
been forced anyhow, because they had started anthrax,
and were going down like flies. I intended, in accordance
with orders from above, to retain only an essential half-
dozen to carry wireless, some medical stores, and, at least
as far as the Irrawaddy, some of my hard-hitting weapons.

Next morning at moonrise we started for the Irrawaddy.
Blackwood's Magazine, September 1943
258

WILL OGILVIE

TTie Blades of Harden

Ho ! for the blades of Harden !

Ho ! for the driven kye !
The broken gate and the lances' hate.

And a banner red on the sky !
The rough road runs by the Carter ;

The white foam creams on the rein ;
Ho ! for the blades of Harden !

' There will be moonlight again.'

The dark has heard them gather,

The dawn has bowed them by.
To the guard on the roof comes the drum of a hoof

And the drone of a hoof's reply.
There are more than birds on the hill tonight.

And more than winds on the plain !
The threat of the Scotts has filled the moss,

' There will be moonhght again.'

Ho ! for the blades of Harden !

Ho ! for the ring of steel !
The stolen steers of a hundred years

Come home for a Kirkhope meal !
The ride must risk its fortune.

The raid must count its slain,
The March must feed her ravens,

' There will be moonhght again ! *

359

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Ho ! for the blades of Harden !

Ho ! for the pikes that cross !
Ho ! for the king of lance and ling

— ^A Scott on the Ettrick moss !
The rough road runs by the Carter,

The white foam creams on the rein ;
And aye for the blades of Harden

' There will be moonlight again ! '

Whaup o' the Rede

260

ERIC LINKLATER

Sealskin Trousers

I AM not mad. It is necessary to realise that, to accept it
as a fact about which there can be no dispute. I have
been seriously ill for some weeks, but that was the result
of a shock. A double or conjoint shock : for as well as
the obvious concussion of a brutal event, there was the
more dreadful necessity of recognising the material
evidence of a happening so monstrously implausible that
even my friends here, who in general are quite extra-
ordinarily kind and understanding, will not believe in
the occurrence, though they cannot deny it or otherwise
explain — I mean explain away — the clear and simple
testimony of what was left.

I, of course, realised very quickly what had happened,
and since then I have more than once remembered
that poor Coleridge teased his unquiet mind, quite
V unnecessarily in his case, with just such a possibility ; or
impossibility, as the world woiJd call it. ' If a man could
pass through Paradise in a dream,' he wrote, ' and have
a flower presented to him as a pledge that his soul had
really been there, and if he found that flower in his hand
when he woke — Ay, and what then ? '
' But what if he had dreamt of hell and wakened with
his hand burnt by the fire ? Or of chaos, and seen another
face stare at him from the looking-glass ? Coleridge does
not push the question far. He was too timid. But I
accepted the evidence, and while I was ill I thought
seriously about the whole proceeding, in detail and in
sequence of detail. I thought, indeed, about Mttle else.
To begin with, I admit, I was badly shaken, but gradually
my mind cleared and my vision improved, and because
I was patient and persevering — that needed discipline —

261

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

I can now say that I know what happened. I have indeed,
by a conscious intellectual effort, seen and heard what
happened. This is how it began. . . .

How very unpleasant ! she thought.

She had come down the great natural steps on the sea
cliff to the ledge that narrowly gave access, round the
angle of it, to the western face which today was sheltered
from the breeze and warmed by the afternoon sun. At
the beginning of the week she and her fiance, Charles
Sellin, had found their way to an almost hidden shelf, a
deep veranda sixty feet above the white-veined water.
It was rather bigger than a billiard table and nearly as
private as an abandoned lighthouse. Twice they had
spent some blissful hours there. She had a good head for
heights, and Sellin was indifferent to scenery. There had
been nothing vulgar, no physical contact, in their bliss
together on this oceanic gazebo, for on each occasion she
had been reading Healoin's Studies in Biology, and he
Lenin's What is to he Done ?

Their relations were already marital, not because their
mutual passion could brook no pause, but rather out of
fear lest their friends might despise them for chastity and
so conjecture some oddity or impotence in their nature.
Their behaviour, however, was very decendy circumspect,
and they already conducted themselves, in pubUc and out
of doors, as if they had been married for several years.
They did not regard the seclusion of the cliflFs as an
opportunity for secret embracing, but were content that
the sun should warm and colour their skin ; and let their
minds be soothed by the surge and cavernous colloquies
of the sea. Now, while Charles was writing letters in
the Utde fishing hotel a mile away, she had come back
to their sandstone ledge, and Charles would join her in
an hour or two. She was still reading Studies in Biology.

262

ERIC LINKLATER

But their gazebo, she perceived, was already occupied,
and occupied by a person of the most embarrassing
appearance. He was quite unlike Charles. He was not
only naked, but obviously robust, brown-hued, and
extremely hairy. He sat on the very edge of the rock,
dangling his legs over the sea, and down his spine ran
a ridge of hair like the dark stripe on a donkey's back, and
on his shoulder-blades grew patches of hair like the wings
of a bird. Unable in her disappomtment to be sensible
and leave at once, she lingered for a moment and saw to
her relief that he was not quite naked. He wore trousers
of a dark-brown colour, very low at the waist, but
sufficient to cover his haunches. Even so, even with
that protection for her modesty, she could not stay and
read biology in his company.

To show her annoyance, and let him become aware of
it, she made a Uttle impatient sound ; and turning to go,
looked back to see if he had heard.

He swung himself round and glared at her, more angry
on the instant than she had been. He had thick eyebrows,
large dark eyes, a snub nose, a big mouth. ' You're Roger
Fairfield ! ' she exclaimed in surprise.

He stood up and looked at her intently. ' How do you
know ? ' he asked.

' Because I remember you,' she answered, but then felt
a htde confused, for what she principally remembered
was the brief notoriety he had acquired, in his final year
at Edinburgh University, by swimming on a rough
autumn day firom North Berwick to the Bass Rock to
wm a bet of five pounds. ,

The story had gone briskly round the town for a week,
and everybody knew that he and some friends had been
lunching, too well for caution, before the bet was made.
His fi'iends, however, grew quickly sober when he took
to the water, and in a great fright informed the pohce,

263

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

who called out the lifeboat. But they searched in vain,
for the sea was running high, until in the calm water
under the shelter of the Bass they saw his head, dark
on the water, and pulled him aboard. He seemed none
the worse for his adventure, but the poUce charged him
with disorderly behaviour, and he was fmed two pounds
for svlimming without a regulation costume.

' We met twice,' she said, ' once at a dance and once
in Mackie's when we had coffee together. About a year
ago. There were several of us there, and we knew the
man you came in with. I remember you perfectly.'

He stared the harder, his eyes narroAving, a vertical
wrinkle dividing his forehead. ' I'm a little short-sighted
too,' she said with a nervous laugh.

' My sight's very good,' he answered, ' but 1 find it
difficult to recognise people. Human beings are so much
alike.'

' That's one of the rudest remarks I've ever heard ! '

' Surely not ? '

' Well, one does like to be remembered. It isn't
pleasant to be told that one's a nonentity.'

He made *an impatient gesture. ' That isn't what I
meant, and I do recognise you now. I remember your
voice. You have a distinctive voice and a pleasant one.
F sharp in the octave below middle C is your note.'

' Is that the only way in which you can distinguish
people ? '

' It's as good as any other.'

' But you don't remember my name ? '

' No,' he said.

' I'm Ehzabeth Barford.'

He bowed and said, ' Well, it was a dull party, wasn't
it ? The occasion, I mean, when we drank coffee
together.'

' I don't agree with you. I thought it was very amusuig
264

ERIC LINKLATER

and we all enjoyed ourselves. Do you remember
Charles Sellin ? '

! No.'

' Oh you're hopeless,' she exclaimed. ' What is the
good of meeting people if you're going to forget all about
diem?'

' I don't know,' he said. ' Let us sit down, and you can
tell me.'

He sat again on the edge of the rock, his legs dangling,
and looking over his shoulder at her, said, ' Tell me :
what is the good of meeting people ? '

She hesitated and answered, ' I like to make friends.
That's quite natural, isn't it ? But I came here to read.'

' Do you read standing ? '

' Of course not,' she said, and smoothing her skirt
tidily over her knees, sat down beside him. ' What a
wonderful place this is for a hohday. Have you been
here before ? '

' Yes, I know it well.'

' Charles and I came a week ago. Charles Sellin, I
mean, whom you don't remember. We're going to be
married, you know. In about a year, we hope.'

' why did you come here ? '

' We wanted to be quiet, and in these islands one is
fairly secure against interruption. We're both working
quite hard.'

' Working ! ' he mocked. ' Don't waste time, waste
your life instead.'

' Most of us have to work whether we like it or not.'

He took the book from her lap, and opening it read idly
a few lines, turned a dozen pages and read with a yawn
another paragraph.

' Your friends in Edinburgh,' she said, ' were better
off than ours. Charles and I, and all the people we know,
have got to make our living.'

265

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

' Why ? ' he asked.

' Because if we don't we shall starve,' she snapped.

' And if you avoid starvation — ^what then ? '

' It's possible to hope,' she said stiffly, ' that we shall be
of some use in the world.'

' Do you agree with this ? ' he asked, smothering a
second yawn, and read from the book : ' The psychical
factor in a germ-cell is beyond our analysis or assessment, but
can we deny subjectivity to the primordial initiatives ? It is
easier, perhaps, to assume that mind comes late in development,
but the assumption must not be established on the grounds that
we can certainly deny self-expression to the cell. It is common
knowledge that the mind may influence the body both greatly
and in little unseen ways; but how it is done, we do not
know. Psychobiology is still in its infancy'

' It's fascinating, isn't it ? ' she said,

' How do you proj)ose,' he asked, ' to be of use to the
world ? *

' Well, the world needs people who have been educated
— educated to think — and one does hope to have a litde
influence in some way.'

' Is a little influence going to make any diiFerence ?
Don't you think that what the world needs is to develop
a new sort of mind ? It needs a new primordial directive,
or quite a lot of them, perhaps. But psychobiology is still
in its infency, and you don't know how such changes
come about, do you ? And you can't foresee when you
will know, can you ? '

' No, of course not. But science is advancing so
quickly '

' In fifty thousand years ? ' he interrupted. ' Do you
think you will know by then ? '

' It's difficult to say,' she answered seriously, and was
gathering her thoughts for a careful reply when again he
interrupted, rudely, she thought, and quite irrelevantly.

266

ERIC LINKLATER

His attention had strayed from her book to the sea
beneath, and he was looking down as though searching
for something. ' Do you swim ? ' he asked.

' Rather well,' she said.

' I went in just before high water, when the weed down
there was all brushed in the opposite direction. You
never get bored by the sea, do you ? '

' I've never seen enough of it,' she said. ' I want to
Uve on an island, a Uttle island, and hear it all round me.'

' That's very sensible of you,' he answered with more
warmth in his voice. ' That's uncommonly sensible for
a girl like you.'

' What sort of a girl do you think I am ? ' she demanded,
vexation in her accent, but he ignored her and pointed
his brown arm to the horizon :

' The colour has thickened within the last few minutes.
The sea was quite pale on the skyline, and now it's a
belt of indigo. And the writing has changed. The lines
of foam on the water, I mean. Look at that ! There's
a submerged rock out there, and always, about half an
hour after the ebb has started to run, but more clearly
when there's an off-shore wind, you can see those
two Uttle whirlpools and the circle of white round them.
You see the figure they make ? It's like this, isn't it ? '

With a splinter of stone he drew a diagram on the rock.
' Do you know what it is ? ' he asked. ' It's the figure
the Chinese call the T'ai Chi. They say it represents the
origin of all created things. And it's the sign manual of
the sea.'

' But those lines of foam must run into every conceiv-
able shape,' she protested.

' Oh, they do. They do indeed. But it isn't often you
can read them. There he is !' he exclaimed, leaning
forward and staring into the water sixty feet below.
' That's him, the old villain ! '

267

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

From his sitting position, pressing hard down widi his
hands and thrusting against the face of the rock with his
heels, he hurled himself into space, and straightening in
mid-air broke the smooth green surface of the water with
no more splash than a harpoon would have made. A
solitary razor-bill, sunning himself on a shelf below, fled
hurriedly out to sea, and half a dozen white birds, startled
by the sudden movement, rose in the air crying, * Kitti-
wake ! Kittiwake ! '

EUzabeth screamed loudly, scrambled to her feet with
clumsy speed, then knelt again on the edge of the rock
and peered down. In the slowly heaving clear water she
could see a pale shape moving, now striped by the dark
weed that grew in tangles under the flat foot of the rock,
now lost in the shadowy deepness where the tangles were
rooted. In a minute or two his head rose from the sea,
he shook bright drops from his hair, and looked up at her
laughing. Firmly grasped in his right hand, while he trod
water, he held up an enormous blue-black lobster for
her admiration. Then he threw it on to the flat rock
beside him, and swiftly climbing out of the sea, caught it
again and held it, cautious of its bite, till he found a
piece of string in his trouser pocket. He shouted to her,
' I'll tie its claws, and you can take it home for your
supper ! '

She had not thought it possible to cUmb the sheer fece
of the cliff, but from its forefoot he mounted by steps and
handholds invisible from above, and pitching the tied
lobster on to the floor of the gazebo, came nimbly over
the edge.

' That's a bigger one than you've ever seen in your
Ufe before,' he boasted. ' He weighs fourteen pounds,
I'm certain of it. Fourteen pounds at least. Look at the
size of his right claw ! He could crack a coconut with
that. He tried to crack my ankle when I was swimming

268

ERIC tINKLATER

an hour ago, and got into his hole before I could catch
him. But I've caught him now, the brute. He's had
more than twenty years of crime, that black boy. He's
twenty-four or twenty-five by the look of him. He's
older than you, do you reaUse that ? Unless you're a lot
older than you look. How old are you ? '

Ehzabeth took no interest in the lobster. She had
retreated vintil she stood with her back to the rock, pressed
hard against it, the palms of her hands fumbling on the
stone as if feeling for a secret lock or bolt that might give
her entrance into it. Her face was white, her hps pale and
tremulous.

He looked round at her, when she made no answer,
and asked what the matter was.

Her voice was faint and frightened. ' Who are you ? '
she whispered, and the whisper broke into a stanmier.
' What are you ? '

His expression changed, and his face, with the water
drops on it, grew hard as a rock shining under sea. ' It's
only a few minutes,' he said, ' since you appeared to
know me quite well. You addressed me as Roger
Fairfield, didn't you ? '

' But a name's not everything. It doesn't tell you
enough.'

' What more do you want to know ? '

Her voice was so strained and thin that her words
were like the shadow of words, or words shivering in
the cold : ' To jump Uke that, into the sea — it wasn't
human ! '

The coldness of his face wrinkled into a frown. ' That's
a curious remark to make.'

' You would have killed yourself if— if '

He took a seaward step again, looked down at the calm
green depths below, and said, ' You're exaggerating,
aren't you ? It's not much more than fifty feet, sixty

269

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

perhaps, and the water's deep. Here, come back ! Why
are you running away ? '

' Let me go ! ' she cried. ' I don't want to stay here.
I — ^I'm frightened.'

' That's unfortunate. I hadn't expected this to happen.'

' Please let me go ! '

' I don't think I shall. Not until you've told me what
you're frightened of.'

' Why,' she stammered, ' why do you wear fiir
trousers ? '

He laughed, and still laughing caught her round the
waist and pulled her towards the edge of the rock. ' Don't
be alarmed,' he said. ' I'm not going to throw you over.
But if you insist on a conversation about trousers, I think
we should sit down again. Look at the smoothness of
the water, and its colour, and the light in the depths of it :
have you ever seen anything lovelier ? Look at the sky :
that's calm enough, isn't it ? Look at that fulmar sailing
past : he's not worrying, so why should you ? '

She leaned away from him, all her weight against the
hand that held her waist, but his arm was strong and he
seemed unaware of any strain on it. Nor did he pay
attention to the distress she was in — she was sobbing
dryly, Uke a child who has cried too long — but continued
talking in a hght and pleasant conversational tone until
the muscles of her body tired and relaxed, and she sat
within his enclosing arm, making no more effort to
escape, but timorously conscious of his hand upon her
side so close beneath her breast.

' I needn't tell you,' he said, ' the conventional reasons
for wearing trousers. There are people, I know, who
sneer at all conventions, and some conventions deserve
their sneering. But not the trouser convention. No,
indeed ! So we can admit the necessity of the garment,
and pass to consideration of the mataial. Wdl, I like

270

ERIC LINKLATES

sitting on rocks, for one thing, and for such a hobby this
is the best stuff in the world. It's very durable, yet soft
and comfortable. I can slip into the sea for half an hour
without doing it any harm, and when I come out to sun
myself on the rock again, it doesn't feel cold and clammy.
Nor does it fade in the sun or shrink with the wet. Oh,
there are plenty of reasons for having one's trousers made
of stuff like this.'

' And there's a reason,' she said, ' that you haven't told
me.'

' Are you quite sure of that ? '

She was calmer now, and her breathing was controlled.
But her face was still white, and her lips were softly
nervous when she asked him, ' Are you going to kill
me ?'

'Kill you? Good heavens, no ! Why should I do that?'

' For fear of my telling other people.'

' And what precisely would you tell them ? '

' You know.'

' You jump to conclusions far too quickly : that's your
trouble. Well, it's a pity for your sake, and a nuisance
for me. I don't think I can let you take that lobster home
for your supper after all. I don't, in fact, think you wiU
go home for your supper.'

Her eyes grew dark again with fear, her mouth opened,
but before she could speak he pulled her to him and closed
it, not asking leave, wiih a roughly occludent kiss.

' That was to prevent you from screaming. I hate to
hear people scream,' he told her, smiling as he spoke.
' But this ' — he kissed her again, now gently and in a more
protracted embrace — ' that was because I wanted to.'

' You musm't ! ' she cried.

' But I have,' he said.

' I don't understand myself 1 I can't understand what

has happened '

271

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

' Very little yet,' he murmured.

' Something terrible has happened ! '

' A kiss ? Am I so repulsive ? '

' I don't mean that. I mean something inside me.
I'm not — at least I think I'm not — I'm not frightened
now ! '

' You have no reason to be.'

' I have every reason in the world. But I'm not ! I'm
not frightened — but I want to cry.'

'Then cry,' he said soothingly, and made her piUow
her cheek against his breast. ' But you can't cry comfort-
ably vsrith that ridiculous contraption on your nose.'

He took from her the hom-rimmed spectacles she wore,
and threw them into the sea.

' Oh ! ' she exclaimed. ' My glasses ! — Oh, why did
you do that ? Now I can't see. I can't see at all without
my glasses ! '

' It's all right,' he assured her. ' You won't need
them. The refraction,' he added vaguely, * will be quite
different.'

As if this small but unexpected act of violence had
brought to the boiling-point her desire for tears, they
bubbled over, and because she threw her arms about him
in a sort of fond despair, and snuggled close, sobbing
vigorously still, he felt the warm drops trickle down his
skm, and from his skin she drew into her eyes the salmess
of the sea, which made her weep the more. He stroked
her hair with a strong but soothing hand, and when she
grew calm and lay still in his arms, her emotion spent,
he sang quietly to a little enchanting tune a song that
began :

' I am a Man upon the land,
lam a Selkie in the sea.
And when I'mfarfiom every stand
I am at home on Sule Skerry.'
272

ERIC LINELATER

After the first verse or two she fireed herself firom his
embrace, and sitting up Ustened gravely to the song.
Then she asked him ' Shall I ever understand ? '

' It's not a unique occurrence,' he told her. ' It has
happened quite often before, as I suppose you know.
In ComwaU and Brittany and among the Western Isles
of Scotland ; that's where people have always been
interested in seals, and understood them a httle, and
where seals from time to time have taken human shape.
The one thing that's unique in our case, in my meta-
morphosis, is that I am the only seal-man who has ever
become a Master of Arts of Edmburgh University. Or,
I believe, of any university. I am the unique and solitary
example of a sophisticated seal-man.'

' I must look a perfect fright,' she said. ' It was silly of
me to cry. Are my eyes very red ? '

' The hds are a little pink — ^not unattractively so — but
your eyes are as dark and lovely as a moimtain pool in
October, on a sunny day in October. They're much
improved since I threw your spectacles away.'

' I needed them, you know. I feel quite stupid without
them. But tell me why you came to the University —
and how ? How could you do it ? '

' My dear girl — what is your name, by the way ? I've
quite forgotten.'

' Ehzabeth ! ' she said angrily.

" I'm so glad, it's my favourite human name. But you
don't really want to listen to a lecture on psychobiology ? '

' I want to know how. You must tell me ! '

' Well, you remember, don't you, what your book says
about the primordial initiatives ? But it needs a foomote
there to explain that they're not exhausted till quite late
in hfe. The germ-cells, as you know, are always renew-
ing themselves, and they keep their initiatives though they
nearly always follow the chosen pattern except in the

(766) 273 1*

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

case of certain illnesses, or under special direction. The
direction of the mind, that is. And the glands have got
a lot to do in a full metamorphosis, the renal first and then
the pituitary, as you would expect. It isn't approved of
— making the change, I mean — but every now and then
one of us does it, just for a firoUc in the general way, but
in my case there was a special reason.'
' Tell me,' she said again.

* It's too long a story.'
' I want to know.'

' There's been a good deal of unrest, you see, among my
people in the last few years : doubt, and dissatisfaction
with our leaders, and scepticism about traditional belief
— all that sort of thing. We've had a lot of discussion
under the surface of the sea about the nature of man, for
instance. We had always been taught to believe certain
things about him, and recent events didn't seem to bear
out what our ^eachers told us. Some of our younger
people got dissatisfied, so I volunteered to go ashore and
investigate. I'm stiU considering the report I shall have
to make, and that's why I'm living, at present, a double
life. I come ashore to think, and go back to the sea to
rest.'

' And what do you think of us ? ' she asked.

' You're interesting. Very interesting indeed. There
are going to be some curious mutations among you before
long. Within three or four thousand years, perhaps.'

He stooped and rubbed a little smear of blood firom liis
shin. ' I scratched it on a limpet,' he said. ' The limpets,
you know, are the same today as they were four hundred
thousand years ago. But human beings aren't nearly so
stable.'

' Is that your main impression, that humanity's
unstable ? '

* That's part of it. But from our point of view there's

274

ERIC LINKLATER

something much more upsetting. Our people, you see,
are quite simple creatures, and because we have relatively
few behefs, we're very much attached to them. Our life
is a Ufe of sensation — ^not entirely, but largely — and we
ought to be extremely happy. We were, so long as we
were satisfied with sensation and a short undisputed creed.
We have some advantages over human beings, you know.
Human beings have to carry their own weight about,
and they don't know how blissful it is to be unconscious
of weight : to be wave-borne, to float on the idle sea,
to leap without effort in a curving wave, and look up at
the dazzle of the sky through a smother of white water,
or dive so easily to the calmness far below and take a
haddock from the weed-beds in a sudden rush of appetite.
Talkmg of haddocks,' he said, ' it's getting late. It's
nearly time for fish. And I must give you some instruction
before we go. The preliminary phase takes a little while,
about five minutes for you, I should think, and then
you'll be another creature.'

She gasped, as though already she felt the water's chill,
and whispered, ' Not yet ! Not yet, please.'

He took her in his arms, and expertly, with a strong
caressing hand, stroked her hair, stroked the roundness
of her head and the back of her neck and her shoulders,
feelmg her muscles moving to his touch, and down the
hollow of her back to her waist and hips. The head
again, neck, shoulders and spine. Again and again.
Strongly and firmly his hand gave her calmness, and
presently she whispered, ' You're sending me to sleep.'

' My God ! ' he exclaimed, ' you mustn't do mat !
Stand up, stand up, Elizabeth ! '

' Yes,' she said, obeying him. ' Yes, Roger. Why did
you call yourself Roger ? Roger Fairfield ? '

' I found the name in a drowned sailor's pay-book.
What does that matter now ? Look at me, Elizabeth ! '

275

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

She looked at him and smiled.

His voiced changed and he said happily, ' You'll be
die prettiest seal between Shetland and the Scillies. Now
listen. Listen carefully.' He held her Hghtly and
whispered in her ear. Then kissed her on the lips and
cheek, and bending her head back, on the throat. He
looked and saw the colour come deeply into her face.

' Good,' he said. ' That's the first stage. The adren-
alin's flowing nicely now. You know about the
pituitary, don't you ? That makes it easy then. There
are two parts in the pituitary gland, the anterior and
posterior lobes, and both must act together. It's not
difEcult, and I'll tell you how.'

Then he whispered again, most urgently, and watched
her closely. In a little while he said, ' And now you can
take it easy. Let's sit down and wait till you're ready.
The actual change won't come till we go down.'

' But it's working,' she said, quiedy and happily. ' I
can feel it working.'

' Of course it is.' ■

She laughed triumphandy, and took his hand.

' We've got nearly five minutes to wait,' he said.

' What will it be like ? What shall I feel, Roger ? '

' The water moving against your side, the sea caressing
you and holding you.'

' Shall I be sorry for what I've left; behind ? '

* No, I don't think so.'

' You didn't like us, then ? Tell me what you
discovered in the world.'

' Quite simply,' he said, ' diat we had been deceived.'

' But I don't know what your belief had been.'

' Haven't I told you ? Well, we in our innocence
respected you because you could work, and were wiUing
to work. That seemed to us truly heroic. We don't work
at aU, you see, and you'll be* much happier when you

276

ERIC LINKLATER

come to US. We who live in the sea don't struggle to
keep our heads above water.'

' AU my friends worked hard,' she said. * I never knew
anyone who was idle. We had to work, and most of us
worked for a good purpose ; or so we thought. But
you didn't think so ? '

' Our teachers had told us,' he said, ' that men endured
the burden of human toil to create a surplus of wealth
that would give them leisure from the daily task of bread-
vidnning. And in their hard-won leisure, our teachers
said, men cultivated wisdom and charity and the fme arts ;
and became aware of God. But that's not a true descrip-
tion of the world, is it ? '

' No,' she said, ' that's not the truth.'

' No,' he repeated, ' our teachers were wrong, and
we've been deceived.'

' Men are always being deceived, but they get accus-
tomed to learning the facts too late. They grow accus-
tomed to deceit itself

' You are braver than we, perhaps. My people will not
like to be told the truth.'

' I shall be vdth you,' she said, and took his hand. But
still he stared gloomily at the moving sea.

The minutes passed, and presently she stood up and
with quick fmgers put off her clothes. ' It's time,' she said.

He looked at her, and his gloom vanished hke the
shadow of a cloud that the wind has hurried on, and
exultation followed like sunlight spUling from the burning
edge of a cloud. ' I wanted to punish tliem,' he cried,
' for robbing me of my faith, and now by God, I'm
punishing them hard. I m robbing their treasury now,
the inner vault of all their treasury ! I hadn't guessed
you were so beautiful ! The waves when you swim will
catch a burnish from you, the sand will shine like silver
when you lie down to sleep, and if you can teach the red

277

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

sea-ware to blush so well, I shan't miss the roses of your
world.'

' Hurry,' she said.

He, laughing sofdy, loosened the leather thong that
tied his trousers, stepped out of them and Hfted her in his
arms. ' Are you ready ? ' he asked.

She put her arms round his neck and sofdy kissed his
cheek. Then with a great shout he leapt from the rock,
from the Httle veranda, into the green silk calm of the
water far below. . . .

I heard the splash of their descent — I am quite sure I
heard the splash — as I came round the comer of the cliflf,
by the ledge that leads to the little rock veranda, our
gazebo, as we called it, but the first thing I noticed, that
really attracted my attention, was an enormous blue-
black lobster, its huge claws tied with string, that was
moving in a rather ludicrous fashion towards the edge.
I think it fell over just before I left, but I wouldn't swear
to that. Then I saw her book, the Studies in Biology, and
her clothes.

Her white linen frock with the brown collar and the
brown belt, some other garments, and her shoes were all
there. And beside them, lying across her shoes, was a
pair of sealskin trousers.

I reahsed immediately, or almost inunediately, what
had happened. Or so it seems to me now. And if, as I
firmly believe, my apprehension was instantaneous, the
faculty of intuition is clearly more important than I had
previously supposed. I have, of course, as I said before,
given the matter a great deal of thought during my recent
illness, but the impression remains that I understood what
had happened in a flash, to use a common but illuminating
phrase. And no-one, need I say ? has been able to refute
my intuition. No-one, that is, has found an alternative

278

BRIC LINKLATBR

explanation for the presence, beside Elizabeth's linen
frock, of a pair of sealskin trousers.

I remember also my physical distress at the discovery.
My breath, for several minutes I think, came into and went
out of my lungs like the hot wind of a dust-storm in the
desert. It parched my mouth and grated in my throat.
It was, I recall, quite a torment to breathe. But I had to,
of course.

Nor did I lose control of myself in spite of the agony,
both mental and physical, that I was suffering. I didn't
lose control till they began to mock me. Yes, they did,
I assure you of tliat. I heard his voice quite clearly, and
honesty compels me to admit that it was singularly sweet
and the tune was the most haimting I have ever heard.
They were about forty yards away, two seals swimming
together, and the evening light was so clear and taut that
his voice might have been the vibration of an invisible
bow across its coloured bands. He was singing the song
that Elizabeth and I had discovered in an album of
Scottish music in the Httle fishing hotel where we had
been living :

' I am a Man upon the land,
* J am a Selkie in the sea.

And when I'm far from any strand
I am at home on Sule Skerry I '

But his purpose, you see, was mockery. They were

happy, together in the vast simpHcity of the ocean, and

I, abandoned to the terror of life alone, life among

human beings, was lost and fuU of panic. It was then

I began to scream. I could hear myself screaming, it

was quite horrible. But I couldn't stop. I had to go on

screaming. . . .

Sealskin Trousers and Other Stories

279

GEORGE CAMPBELL HAY

Ardlamont

Rain from windward, sharp and blinding ;

sweet to hear my darling tramping
on her way, the seas unminding,

swinging forefoot woimding, stamping.

Steep to windward ridges breaking,
huddled down in flocks before her ;

hght she throws her head up, shaking
broken seas and spindrift o'er her.

Wind on Loch Fyne

To a Loch Fyne Fisherman

Calum thonder, long's the night to your thinking,
night long till dawn and the sun set at the tiller,
age and the cares of four and a boat to keep you
high in the stem, alone for the winds to weary.

A pillar set in the shifting moss, a beacon
fixed on the wandering seas and changing waters, .
bright on the midnight waves and the hidden terrors ;
the ancient yew of the glen, not heeding the ages.

Set among men that waver like leaves on the branches,
stiQ among minds that flicker like light on the water.
Those are the shadows of clouds, the speckled and fleeting ;
you are the hill that stands through shadow and sunlight.

Little you heed, or care to change with changes,
to go like a broken branch in the grip of a torrent ;
you are your judge and master, your sentence unshaken,
a man with a boat of his own and a mind to guide her.

Wind on Loch Fyne
280

GEORGE CAMPBELL HAY

The Smoky Smirr o Rain

A misty momin' doon the shore wi a hushed an' caller air,
an' ne'er a breath frae East or West tie sway the rashes there,
a sweet, sweet scent firae Laggan's birks gaed breathin' on its

ane,
their branches hingin' beaded in the smoky smirr o rain.

The hills aroond war silent wi the mist alang the braes.
The woods war derk an' quiet wi dewy, glintin' sprays.
The thrushes didna raise for me, as I gaed by alane,
but a wee, wae cheep at passin' in the smoky smirr o rain.

Rock an' stane lay gUsterin' on aa the heichs abune.

Cool an' kind an' whisperin' it drifted gently doon,

till hiU an' howe war rowed in it, an' land an' sea war gane.

Aa was still an' saft an' silent in the smoky smirr o rain.

Wind on Loch Pyne

281

GEORGE SCOTT-MONCRIEFF

Lowland Portraits

[By Lowlands here the author intends not the Central Low-
lands only but all Scottish lowland areas where burghs have
bjeen long established — e.g. the south-west, south-east and
north-east of Scodand]

Kirkcudbright

The most attractive of the Galloway burghs is unques-
tionably Kirkcudbright. A little larger than Gatehouse,
it is better planned, less elongated, less of the Scottish
tendency to a high-road community, being on no main
road, but an outpost at the estuary of the Dee. At high
tide the great breadth of water around it makes a brilliant
setting. There are whole blocks of fine eighteenth-
century houses in its streets : classical austerity in the
homespun of a not-too-finished stone, suited to a remote
and rural township. These houses were the town
mansions of the gentry in the days when provinces were
also units. . . .

The Isle of Whithorn

The best of the Galloway villages is the Isle of Whithorn,
although, like Kirkcudbright, its charm depends partly
upon the tide. The ' Isle ' itself is a peninsula, a green spit
of land, well shaped, without houses except for the
laroch of the Norman church that replaced the Candida
casa built by St Ninian when he brought Chnstianity to
the Picts of his native place in the year 397. The houses
are built above a sea wall along a curve of land running
out to the Isle. Many of them are white, and some a dark
ox-blood red. Towards the seaward end is a white kirk,

282

GEORGE SCOTT-MONCRIEF F

built out over the water and facing the single line of
houses, like a white-cassocked preacher addressing his
congregation. It was so built because the laird would not
feu ground for building a Free Kirk. . . .

The Galloway Pattern

Its most personal characteristic is the small scale of every-
thing. The hiUs are small and the mountains are small.
The fields are small, rarely level ; they dimb the foothills
and embrace small outcrops of rock that the plough skirts
with Uquid curves. Most of the roads are still small, not
driven like thongs across the country, unregarding of its
contours, but winding, rising and falling, so that driving
along them one has tliat sense of contact with the land-
scape which is denied by the modern trunk road. The
native cattle are small. The Galloway Beltie, black or
dun with a wide neat white belly-band, is still a familiar
within the knobbly dyked enclosures ; but the nacive
pony, stocky and muscular, is almost extinct. Shake-
speare makes mention of the old Galloway nag, and the
author o( Lithgow's Rare Adventures, writing in 163a, says
' this coimtry aboundeth in Bestiall, especially in Uttle
Horses, which for mettall and Riding, may rather be
termed bastard Barbs, than Gallowedian Nagges.' He
himself rode south, en route for Russia, on one of them.
Lord Stair a hundred years later, Ambassador in Paris,
was making gifts of Galloway pomes to the French
nobility. They were probably Ian to the Norwegian
pony and owed their origin to the Viking invasions. The
original Galloway sheep were small, with fine wool,
sinular to the Shetland and the old Highland breeds. But,
like the Highlands, Galloway went over to the blackfaced,
whose wool IS so coarse it is used chiefiy for carpets.

283

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Anwoth

Over the hill from Gatehouse Ues Anwoth Auld Kirk, long
since deserted in favoiu: of an ungainly successor. Yet the
first kirk was bxiilt for the ministry of Samuel Rutherford,
one of the most striking figures of the Kirk, a poet-
evangelist, not merely worthy but imaginative. (* These
things take me so up, that a borrowed bed, another man's
fireside, the wind upon my face — I being driven firom my
lovers and dear acquaintance, and my poor flocks-find
no room in my sorrow. I have no spare or odd sorrow
for these ; only I think the sparrows and swallows that
build their nests in the kirk of Anwoth blessed birds.
Nothing has given my faith a harder back-set till it crack
again than my closed mouth.') The auld kirk is now a
laroch, prettily set vdthin its graveyard. There are some
good stones here, including one of those Covenanters'
tombs vidth epitaph in vigorous rhyme, to be found
in many small Galloway kirkyards and almost peculiar
to the province (in which, imlike most places, the
Covenanters were more persecuted than persecuting).

The Old House of Park

It is hard for us to conceive the tightness of mind that,
for example, evolved the Old House of Park : made it
perfect with apparently no intention other than to build
a house to measure, while today thousands of architects
must strive with textbook and theory and rarely achieve
anything half so satisfying. Park stands grandly, an angle
house of the transition period — between tower and
mansion — that is perhaps the most interesting of all in
Scottish architecture. The heavy chimneys, the bold
gables, give sense of might and height ; the low un-
symmetrical wings, flung out at a sHghtly later date, with
their broad hipped-roofs and wide chimney-stacks, add
depth and repose. At the back the elevation is relieved

284

GEORGB SCOTT-MONCRIEFF

by the low dormers and by a single-storied projection,
a neat buttock. There is as much, or more, artistry in
Park than in any picture Raebum ever painted : for the
price of a cheap Raebum it could be saved, renovated
into the loveliest of homes without the shghtest prejudice
even to the fenestration. . . .

White Hares

I have been with the shepherds shooting white hares on
the tops aroimd Black Law. We clambered up into a
clinging mist, and trudged through snow-patches ; high
up the red bog grasses were encased in sheaths of ice.
The earth and one's fellow-shooters loomed queerly
and disappeared as strangely. The foreman shepherd's
flask contained claret, the chill taken off it by his person :
it seemed to me more cordial than whisky. He shared
it with me as we lunched above a gully through which
water spouted and mingled spray with the mist. I had
long completely lost my bearings, and supposed, as we
descended, that it was Manor that coiled through the
valley which sprang suddenly from the mist, but it was
Megget Water that flows into St Mary's Loch. Until
now we had seen hardly a hare, but as we descended on
Megget we could see them, mottled white against the
uncovered ground, feeding on the low country. They
ran up towards us and the guns blazed ; but we were
widely spaced, and far more were hit than were killed,
which is the sad thing to white hare shooting. . . .

Traquair

Six nules down the river from Peebles lies Innerleithen,
well situated but a dull sprawHng place. A road here
crosses Tweed, runs through a pleasant slip of a village —
with two delightful miniature houses, one empty and
ivy-grown, the other spruce in yellow wash — ^and passes

285

THE THISTLE AND THE PBN

the gates of Traquair that have not been opened since
Prince Charles Edward passed through them. Great
toothy bears surmount tlie gateposts, and between them
the grass-covered drive dips to a ghmpse of the house.
Traquair is a building that has grown over many years,
the latest part dating from the end of the seventeenth
century. It is one of the most impressive houses in
Scodand and peculiarly Scottish in character. The grey
harled walls rise straight up, breaking at three stages into
single turrets, one a stair tower, one almost a bartizan ;
deep-roofed wings enfold a court fronted by a fiirther
pair of gates. The north side is still more austere, but the
line falls to the east, and in front are two terraces flanked
with pavihons with ogival roofs. Yet there is nothing
that could apdy be called grim about Traquair ; rather
the spatial grace enwrapping its austerity gives it a quality
of supremely unconscious romanticism.

Smailholm

Smailholm is the one tower remainng essentially un-
touched and complete of that simplest type that once
stood freely across the Border country. At the north of
the county of Roxburgh, it stands high on a grassy rock ;
simple box form with smaU windows, one dormer and a
cap-house to the parapet which runs along two sides only.
The roof pitch is crow-stepped, but all the slates away
and the poor back of the vaulting exposed to the rains.
Around are two other rocky knolls and then a view for
miles ; soudiwards to the three Eildon stacks. To the
north Hes a pool of water, with an islet, in which Smail-
holm reflects and seems momentarily a plaad casde,
Narcissus-hke in self-admiration, then again asserts the
tremendous austerity of its outline against the mad moon-
mountains of the landscape. Its walls are speckled like
the Scotch Grey hens that peck by the road-end farm-

286

GEORGB SCOTT-MONCRIEFP

Stead, dark and light, a hard-looking stone, with red
ashlar angles and scant dressing to the windows ; one is
impressed with recollection of ghnts of brickwork
amongst soiled city walls. And once more Smailholm is
graceful by dint of its eminence, the slight softening of its
pattern and form where the roof and the dormer and
parapet emerge from the barrack walls. WUd thyme,
tormentil, yellow bedstraw, and violas grow amongst
the rocks and the gorse. SmaUholm when it seems to
blossom tn summer becomes elemental, in winter it is
barren with the dead grasses. . . .

Kelso

Kelso looks bigger than it is, for it is well planned, not
unadily developed, but with streets running out of a
central square. It is a charming town : in particular.
Bridge Street, where there is a double row of^pilastered
shops — may they remain intact, and no cham store smash
into them with vulgar frontage framing shoddy goods.
These pilastered shops reap additional charm from curving
to the named abbey, whose arcading is so fme that even
as a ruin it has aesthetic, as distinct from romantic or
assoaaave or speculative significance. The stone is pale,
there is good detail, and the round arches mount grace-
fully to the tower's summit. It is seen today much as it
was left by the pimping earl. For contrast it is worth
looking at the Free Kirk along the pleasant strand leading
to the gateway to Floors : surely there is nowhere more
tortured stonework than that to be seen on this too well-
preserved edifice. . . .

The Black Laird

Through much of the sixteenth century Henry VIII's
troops savaged the land. By the time Queen Mary came
back from France it was to a country in the extremity

287

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

of tumultuous suffering ; a hopeless kingdom. Near
Roxburgh stood the tower of Ormiston, whose founder
in the twelfth century had been a man pious and avilised,
a benefactor of Mehose. Hertford destroyed the tower,
but it was rebuilt by the Black Laird in a day in which
insecurity and moribvmd rehgion had bred aD bloody
excess. The Black Laird shared in Damley's mvurder at
Kirk o' Field. For a subsequent crime he was taken and
hanged. He became penitent after his manner and left
a telling testament : ' With God I hope this night to
sup. ... Of all men on the earth I have been one of the
proudest and most high-minded, and most filthy of my
body. But specially, I have shed innocent blood of one
Michael Hunter with my own hands. Alas, therefore,
because the said Michael, having me lying on my back,
having a pitchfork in his hand, might have slain me if he
pleased, but he did not, which of all things grieves me
most in conscience. . . . Within these seven years I
never saw two good men, not one good deed, but all
kinds of wickedness.' . . .

Dumfries

Despite impoverishment, and despite the unfortunate
overdressed red sandstone of the villas on its outskirts
(that Dumfriesshire sandstone is villainous stuff, tempt-
ingly easily worked), Dmnfries,is a gay and inspiriting
county town. Down to Whitesands and Devorgilla's
bridge runs a small street whose shops burst with their
goods on to the pavements. The tolbooth, the Mid-
steeple, is on an island site in the High Street, its red stone
mellowed. It was finished in 1707, but the blazon is
pre-Anschluss ; alongside it a dehghtful figure of the
town's patron, St M&chael, with a beard, a skirt and a
crozier, standing indifferently on top of a small worm-like
dragon. Bums's house is as nicely done as could have

288

GEORGE SCOTT-MONCRIEFP

been expected, which is to say that it is not offensive.
His mausoleum in the neighbouring kirkyard is of the
Greek Revival, a classical dome covering pastoral statuary.
The guide will insist that you go into the comer that you
may see every button on the bard's breeks, so cunningly
and realistically has the artist done his work (but there
are better buttons to be seen in Edinburgh, from Princes
Street Gardens, on the back of the white marble up-
holstery on the chair of the eminent philanthropist,
Dr Guthrie). . . .

The Old Road

In coaching times the stage from Berwick left the coast
abrupdy, hedging a httle south again, past the poUcies of
the grand Adam house of Paxton, and the church at
Ladykirk biult by James IV and meedy capped by Robert
Adam. Making along the province of Merse for Green-
law, then the county town of Berwickshire, the coach
turned north to Lauder and into Midlothian. On the
road between Greenlaw and Lauder there is still a pair of
gatehouses of that pectdiarly pleasant and absurd period,
the early pseudo ; cottages each with one gable castellated
and fitted with blind Gothic windows, and each bearing
a milestone and a clock whose painted hands show the
times at which the coaches passed, north and south. This
road was the old route, along which marched armies
north to Bannockbum and south to Flodden ; for fertile
though Berwickshire is, its fertility has been won by its
farmers from marsh and moor. The coast road was the
wUder and, with the profound cutting of the Pease Bum,
deterred the traveller. . . .

Farmers

The improving farmer may be mean, tyrannous and

close-fisted, but he has a redemption that the industriaUst

(766) 289 ^

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

lacks. He cannot be an absentee employer, sitting back
and waiting for his profits : he cannot lose touch with
his work or his men. This intimacy and concern save
him from a degrading detachment, so that money is never
the dominating motive of his enterprise. The very risk
and uncertainty of his craft is a safeguard — the weather
cannot be hoodwinked by the conscientious development
of low cunning which for the business man can mitigate
the trade depressions which are part and parcel of his
world. The farmer, moreover, is creating a wealth more
real than that of the manufacturer : a fundamental wealth.
Like the gold reserve that should exist to back bankers'
loans, the land should be treasured as a positive source of
wealth behind all industriaUst development. . . .

East Lothian

East Lothian is the heart of Lothian and one of the loveHest
counties of the Lowlands. Its landscape lies in horizontal
planes of colour : the ruddy twigs of stripped copses,
green of grass, darker green of turnip and kale, dark-and
bright-red ploughland. I suppose it is the rise and fall of
the ground, neither too flat nor too broken, that makes
the effect so marked. At harvest there are strokes of
bronze-red wheat stubble ; and, earUer, stretches of
mellowing grain. Towards Dunbar the earth is as red
as the guts of man. Wonien work in the fields in deep
poke-bonnets, telescopic-like crinolines and covered witt
bright-coloured stuffs. They look up at one, red faces
framed and framing the flash of teeth. Old jumpers and
oddments many-coloured wrap their bodies against the
sea winds. They merit the brush of a Renoir, but their
high-cheek-boned faces are as Scots as his girls are French.
Right up the spur of East Lothian the tilled fields stretch
with a final flourish of intensive cultivation to the crest
of the cliffs at Tantallon. The pitted screen-wall of the

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GEORGE SCOTT-MON CRIEPF

castle stands tremendous, dwarfing the abrupt Bass
beyond, whose white lighthouse buildings look like
something erected by an old seaman inside a bottle. . . .

Progress

Not so many years ago, within the memory of the middle
aged, there were weavers Hving in three thatched cottages
where there is now a wide gap. There was a tailor and a
cobbler. There was a baker, whose assistant is still here
to draw his old-age pension. The neighbouring smithy
is now shut up, with boards across the window, and pUes
of old iron, red with rust like dead leaves, about the door.
The permanent officials regard the village with stem
distaste : the houses have no water supply. True, hun-
dreds of thousands of gallons of water pass close by from
ample reservoirs to the big town. The reservoirs are
lochs in the same parish as the village ; they bring in a
large revenue to the county council : but seemingly the
village has no claim upon them or even upon the expense
of tapping the springs on the slope, save such as will
supply two or three pumps down the street. If the
villagers insist upon water, it will be charged to their
individual rate — an impossible tax upon the dwindling
population. As they can, the authorities condenm the
houses, and shift the people into the box-like structures
that they are busy buUding underneath the slag-heaps of
the mining township four mUes away. The people of
the village — miners or labourers — ^want to keep their
homes, preferring to hve in the covmtry even under
present conditions, and cycle to their work ; but the
grim clerks have the Law behind them, which deems free
choice of domicile a luxury not for the poor. . . .

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THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Fife

In Fife alone amongst Scottish counties is it still possible
to go from one small burgh to the next over a considerable
area and find in each good houses and a fine parish
church, perhaps a tolbooth too. In this Fife is comparable
to parts of England. But the buildings themselves, and
the countryside despite its low lying, are in no way
English. Fife is appropriately situated between the
country of Lothian and that of Angus. It is almost
insular, with the sea to three sides : the country well
farmed and wooded, with Httle moorland ; the chmate
bright, dry and cold.

Ceres

The most attractive village in Scotland is Ceres, near the
cotmty town of Cupar. Ceres does not cling to the road,
but drapes itself graciously about its kirk and bum. Its
people stUl celebrate the return of the men from Bannock-
burn. Nearby a free-standing tower of yeUow ashlar
looks afar over the coimtryside. Here hved that cultured
gentleman. Sir John Scot of Scotstarvit. Sir John edited
the works of Scottish poets, for printing in Holland. He
was also responsible for saving the maps of Timothy Pont
and for their eventual pubhcation by Blaue. He vented
his spleen upon Government in a volume with the tide.
The Staggering State of Scottish Statesmen. He used the
garret of his tower as a study ; an excellent chamber,
with its sunny parapet walk and wide view.

Nairn

The town of Nairn is not beautifiil. It was largely the
creation of the eminent Dr Grigor, whose statue, that of
a fat man in verdigris and a big-brimmed hat with what
may be a Nairn cape (a diminutive Inverness) faUing
back from his wide shoulders, stands in a prominent

292

GEORGE SCOTT-MONCRIEFF

position from which it is shortly to be moved. Dr Grigor
(1814-86) spent the winter in Italy, the summer in Nairn
where he buUt himself a Florentine villa that was terribly
cold and had to be reconstructed after his death. He
sent his ItaHan patients to Nairn and his Nairn patients to
Italy. Nairn became noted as a resort.

Lowlands of Scotland

293

ADAM DRINAN

The Men of the Rocks

Crystal long-boat shadowily moving
curlew home to constant moorland
rounding point to an ancient mooring
leeward of the skerries

a wan grief of unanimous oars

a weary heave of ghostly rowlocks ;

home to the long hill-fortressed harbour
arms hauling, voices hailing,
starved seagulls' drunken harmony
dirge on the wind drifting :

' Swirl of a deep year over our heads
sleep of a deep year round our eyeUds.

Nightly, moonily, nightly oaring
the barnacled huUc from the black sea-floor
a moon and a night and a moon borrowmg
in every year of doom

loom of land piercing our dream
release-image pleasing our gloom.

Night of the first moon. Lay in the anchorage.
Curing-, storing-, landing-places
glowed on shore in grander days
when the rippled world was young.
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ADAM DRIN AN

What those ribs left sprung on shingle,
if they are not our fathers' ships ?
Patterned wefts for the ghosts of fishers
these tattered nets the wind quivers.
Who but the geese and the seagulls forage
where the old men flourished ?

No place here for dead sea-warriors,
no stay here for the brave sea-wanderers ;
one look checked us, turned us, warning us
back to the blank of the sea.

Night of the next moon. Beached and landed.
Oats, and cattle, and a strath once shaggy ;
tales ran warm here ; women sang
when the furrowed world was young.

What will we gather in the time of hairst
if it will not be bracken and heather ?
Who firom the hill will answer, other,
loneUer, than the pipe of plover ?
What has he got that seized and feued it ?
Dead birds and soUtudes !

He that of Indian plains made serfdom
wastes our glens to take his freedom.
Such was our home-come. Back to the doom, come
back yet a year to the sea !

Night of the last moon. Moored in port
summoning out our sons and daughters,
an old call of an old order

when the wrinkled world was young.
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THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

What these passages narrow, secluded,
hard, to the sea-soft, feeling foot ?
Whose these voices drawn, dreary,
harsh to our island-subtle ears ?
Who responds ? who grasps ? who governs ?
where are our children gone ?

Cold, cold, cold the sea
cold the sea, and gUstening ! '

(Their stiff arms fixed at the elbow)

' Cold, cold, cold the sea

the sea, the snake, and the exile ! '

(Their shirts as seals' fur wettened)
' Bitter to the young a young world's death
Better for the old a youth of legend ! '

Ship of glass in water melting
under the bubbly Upper settling
heads bobbing on waves' swell
men that have been are seals.

Men that have been are seals, swimming
save for my friend on a rock, sitting.
Tears his human eyes have dimmed.
We gaze at each other on the skerries.

The Men of the Rocks

296

MORAY McLaren

The Commercial Traveller

A West Highland commercial traveller is a man whose
whole livelihood depends upon his vivacious and un-
affected charm. He has to do more than persuade nice
quiet shopkeepers in south-country towns to buy a
particular kind of thing that they don't want. He has to
deal with a romantic and remote peasantry on the shores
of lochs and in Atlantic islands : a peasantry who are
passionately hospitable to the stranger and the friend, but
who are suspicious of the bagman and the EngUshman.
The West Highland commercial traveller has, therefore,
to approach as a stranger, and then by the charm and the
vivacity of his manner make himself so much a friend that
he can for ever after appear in this light to these particular
people again. He must be bilingual, for many of his
dients have only the GaeUc ; he must have no easy tricks
of a hearty manner ; there must be no slappings on the
back and bull-like roars of : ' How are you, old chap ? '
Nor must he ever be shy and at a loss for the word.
Embarrassment would make liis cUents imeasy, boisterous-
ness repel them. Sometimes he will be so far afield that
the direct method of barter will appeal most to the
natives, and he wiU exchange his packets of tea, or what-
ever it is, for yards of the odorous and rich-looking tweed
which the remoter islanders weave, and which are so
beloved by London business men. Dealing with remote
peoples, who have not only the sensitiveness of the Celt
but the wisdom of a lonely race, he must have one element
of the gentleman — he must neither condescend to, nor
be afraid of those who are less aufait with the world than
he is. Let me say at once that he is himself usually no
romantic or even impressive figure ; he preserves the
splendid boimderdom of his kind when he is amongst

297

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

his kind, or away from the Highlanders ; but he has a
genius, a hidden quality, which on his travels emerges
out of his pre-urban ancestry and makes admirable that
trade which we are accustomed to look upon with such
imfnerited condescension.

I was not aware of these quaHties in the West Highland
commercial traveller when I sat in the Htde bar at Roy
Bridge Inn, for at first I saw nothing worthy of remark
in my companion, and I had not seen the type at work,
as I did afterwards in the Outer Hebrides. My friend was
a little cock sparrow of a man of about fifty, with vivacious
eyes and a funny mobile mouth. . . .

... He reminded me of those impertinent Utde Glasgow
Boy Scouts whom John Buchan writes about — capable
of the more vigorous and amusing side of Glasgow
vulgarity, but quite incapable of the Glasgow mass
sentimentaUty, which has no good side and is merely the
complement to Glasgow brutality. I forget how we got
into conversation, for at the beginning I was too sleepy
to remember much. I think he showed his cturiosity at
my bedraggled and exhausted appearance ; for the Scots,
even the most respectable of them, have an affection for
vagabondage, which was frequendy discovering itself to
me in the half-envious curiosity which my now very
shabby look awoke in the people I met on the way. I
must say here — so fearful am I of being thought to play
without true qualification the picaresque role — that there
was about me no romantic abandonment of dress or
manner, induced by carefiJly exposed rents in my clothes,
or dishevelled hair. It was merely that my tiredness, my
clothes too rough to demand care, my healthy and now
sunburnt skin, spoke of a freedom of purpose and
direction, appealing to the savage which, have as I already
said, lies so near the surface of the Scotsman's mind.

298

MOKAY MCLAREN

The little commercial traveller then, I think, in some
such way opened the conversation with me. My vanity,
which is never sleepy, aroused the rest of me ; and I soon
was talking to him about travel, about France, the
Germanies, and, finally, about Scotland. He showed such
detailed knowledge of the parts of the country into which
I was going — of the Western Highlands and Islands — of
the names of all the most interesting people to see in the
most remote villages, that my curiosity silenced me and
allowed me to listen to story after story (not particularly
amusing in themselves, but catching something from his
own vivacity), of his bartering travels in Skye, Morar,
Sutherland and the Outer Hebrides. Frequently he would
return in his narratives, as he did in his journeys, to the
respectable Glasgow suburb which was his home ; and
would tell me of the local ' footba' club,' of which he was
evidently the doyen and for which he used to go through
the extremely risky feat of refereeing. I had often seen
jokes in the comic papers about the dangers of refereeing,
but had supposed them to be would-be humorous
exaggerations, like the jokes about people being killed
in the fight for buses and tubes. If only one learned to take
one's Punch a Uttle more seriously, what a lot one would
learn ! Now, however, I was enchanted by and, indeed,
beheved the sagas of the Gorbals' football club referee,
and perceived that what I had always looked upon as
incredible happened every Saturday afternoon in Glasgow.
My firiend at the end of his stories used to twist up his
lips into a squeezed and contorted smile, as if he had been
sucking a lemon. This was impressive as well as being
fimny, and made one wonder how much that smile
meant and what that was in words inexpressible was
contained in that curious grimace. There was about the
man a nearness, a precision of manner, which made very
ridiculous the thoi^t of him being subjected to physical

299

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

indignities every Saturday afternoon. After one story of
how he had been removed from the paviHon and out of
the football ground, hidden in a laundry basket, so that he
should escape the fury of the crowd, he drew up his Ups
into so strange a contortion, and for so long a time, tliat
I laughed loudly to his face, and was reHeved to see that he
joined me easily and unofFendedly. After that he per-
ceived his own genius — or that element of it that amused
me — and told stories, all of which ended up with his own
discomfiture and all of wliich were crowned with the
contortion and the laugh. It was three o'clock before we
went to bed.

The next morning broke for me very cheerless. The
hopeless grey that is not quite white of a Highland mist
pressed against my bedroom window-pane. I had been
too tired to sleep well, and I awoke at an indeterminate
hour that was neither early nor late. It was not so late
that I could console myself with the thought that in fact,
if not in sense, I had had many hours' sleep ; it was not
so early that I could turn over and say to myself, ' If you
cannot sleep any more you can at least rest.' I got out
of bed and came downstairs, knowing that only the rich
quahty of a Scottish breakfast could revive me to any-
ming like my normal energy.

I had, however, not only this consolation awaiting me,
but also a very kindly offer ftom my Utde companion,
the cause of my exhaustion. He, who had already break-
fasted, was waiting for me, and upon my arrival offered
to give me a lift on to the shores of Loch Lochy in his
car. I was tired. I had cliildish memories (possibly quite
unjust) that told me that die country between Loch Lochy
and Roy Bridge was dull, the weather was horrible and
above aJl I liked die companionship of my lift offerer :
so I accepted.

300

MORAY MCLAREN

. . . On some of the business calls I accompanied my
friend so as to see him actually on the job. I despair of
being able to describe his manner of persuasion. It was
partly an application of his natural Gaelic ease and charm,
and partly the use of a genius for understanding what
would please those to whom he was talking. By this
genius, which he loved to exercise, even when not for
profit, he had found out from me that I was most amused
by his vivacity and by the thought of his being placed
in undignified positions. It was this discovery on his part
that had enabled him to keep me up till three that morn-
ing. As with me he used tJie stories of his football ex-
periences, so with a crofter or village shopkeeper he would
make a quite direct appeal to the emotion of surprise,
caution, friendliness or whatever else that he knew was
dominant in his cUent's mind. I perhaps make him out
too much of a play-actor, and to counteract this im-
pression let me say at once that to whomever he was
appealing he always remained in appearance, gesture and
manner the perky httle vivacious Glasgow tradesman that
he was by nature. He was never so crude as to change his
voice, save when he had occasion to use the GaeUc. It
was only the things he said, the sentiments which he
attacked in his audience that changed. He was too clever
to rely upon the use of any personahty in manner save
his own natural one.

When we were approaching in the not very late and
foggy afternoon the place where we proposed to spend
the night, we learnt that the local Member of Parliament
was expected to arrive. This man, as it turned out after-'
wards, was to make a speech at the village hall at the
beginning of a small local concert. We heard a good deal
about this concert firom the cHents as we got nearer our
destination and passed quite a niunber of Highlanders
walking in on their way to the festivities. About a mile

301

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

from the village we stopped the car and offered a Uft to
two fine-looking girls accompanied by their brother.
The commercial, who loved to show off his vivacity to
the sex, said to the young man, ' Can you drive, niannie ? '
And on hearing ' Yes,' at once surrendered the wheel to
him (for I had long ago told him that I could not drive)
and got into the back seat along with me and the two
girls. I was at once very much cold-shouldered, for I was
confronted with two handsome girls who to whatever I
said would only reply, ' Yes-s-s-s ' with that fading
sibilance which, however charming to Usten to, is not
the best thing for dispelling shyness. My friend quickly
took the situation in hand, and sitting down between them
put an arm round each of their waists and poured forth
a series of Glasgow music-hall songs about being ' happy
where the girls are ' and others of that kind. They were
soon, of course, giggling happily, and what with the
banging, rattling of the car, the unending songs of the
commercial, the giggling of the girls and my own
laughter, we approached the village in a fairly gay and
somewhat ludicrous way.

As we turned the corner and swung into the httle street
we saw gathered together in a httle knot by the school-
house a collection of local worthies, headed by the
minister. They were evidendy awaiting the arrival of
the legislator. I felt a Utde embarrassed to come before
this austere gathering in such a way, but my fiiend at
once leapt to the occasion again.

He did not stop his singing and did not remove his
arms from the girls' waists, but as the car drew up by the
schoolhouse, shouted out, ' Good-evening to you,
gendemen. I'm glad to see so many of my constituents
here to welcome me.' This was said in that absurd voice
which a Scotsman assumes when he imagines himself to
be imitating the haw-haw type of Englishman. He then

302

MORAY MCLAREN

Stood up in the car, and thrusting one hand under his
overcoat tails, started to make a speech. There was a
pause amongst the waiting crowd. Many of them I
could see either recognised the commercial from his
previous visits or suspected on other grounds that this
funny little creature, now more than ever looking like
a cock sparrow with his tail thrust out, could not be the
man they were waiting to welcome. The minister, how-
ever, who was new to the district and who had evidently
been deputed to be the one to do the welcoming, waited
irresolutely. He did not dare to take no notice — for he
clearly did not know the Member by sight — and it was
just possible that this gesticulating Uttle absurdity might
be he arrived drunk ; also he could not overcome his
siKpicion sufficiently to make an overture of greeting,
which would commit him. The minister stood at the
front of the crowd, and those at the back who knew for
certain that this was not the Member were, for the
moment, not bold enough to come forward and say so
to their deputed chief They could not believe that he
would be taken in : they waited for him to make the
first move, either of anger or amusement. I do not
suppose that the whole scene lasted more than two
minutes, but to the giggling girls and to me, uneasy and
ashamed, it seemed to go on for hours.

The speech was not a very successful, but certainly
vivacious, imitation of the platitudinous nonsense that is
usually produced on such occasions. After a minute the
minister, so it seemed to me, made up his mind that this
was a firaud and was about to move away, when his
suspicions on the other side — that this might really be the
Member, but in a state of drunkenness — were aroused by
the conclusion of the speech, in which my friend in the
name of the Liberal Party invited the entire village to
come with him to the hotel bar and have a drink. He

303

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

added, as he saw the eye of the hotel proprietor, whom
he knew, brightening at this tremendous invitation, that
he had unfortunately no money with him, but would ask
Donald MacLean to put the whole account down to the
Lloyd George Fund. At this Donald, the hotel proprietor,
gave such a shout of laughter that without any abrupt or
unpleasant exposure the whole thing was quite easily and
suddenly taken by everyone as a joke, and those who had
been taken in at the start, anxious that their gullibihty
should not be discovered, were the loudest and most
genial in their expression of amusement. Those who
knew my friend came forward to greet him and intro-
duced him to the minister, who to my admiration did
not show any annoyance. The whole party then, with
that carelessness for time-tables and programmes, which
is the mark of the Celt all over the British Isles, left
the schoolhouse where they had gathered to greet
the approaching Member of ParUament, and wandered
towards the hotel where Donald was soon busy dealing
out whiskies in the bar and in the sitting-room.

The day had been cold and misty, my blood was chilled
by sitting in the car, so I settled down vdth great satis-
faction to my warming drink — ^I had chosen that most
delicious of all warm drinks, a rum and hot milk — and
looked at my surroundings with pleasure. We were in
a warm well-fumished room, vsath deep rugs on the
floor to welcome the feet, and many ' tropliies of the
chase,' as they are always called, hung on the wall to
interest the eye. Highland hotels may be expensive, but
they never have a mean effect. The profession of inn-
keeper has always been considered a gendemanly one in
the north of Scodand, either (as David Balfour said)
because of the tradition of Highland hospitaUty, or
because the profession is one which allov^^ one to be
fairly successful and at the same time drunken and lazy.

304

MORAY MCLAREN

The result is that the ' great hall ' or reception room of
many Highland hotels looks as if it belonged to a great
gentleman's house. It is large, gives off an air of comfort,
and unbeUevably fat salmon in glass cases ornament the
walls ; while the proud heads of the red deer stare at one
out of the lofiy gloom. The chairs and sofas are always
comfortable, the whisky admirable.

This room in which I now found myself looked very
well with the tall Highland farmers and estate agents in
their thick tweeds which smelt deUciously because of the
mist in the air. They were standing about and talking
in that soft, almost feminine, voice which the strongest of
Highlanders always has. I, who was near the fire, noticed
that my fiiend was in another comer of the room talking
to a group of men, and now and again the conversation
amongst them seemed to turn on me, for I noticed
that they looked at me firequendy ; and at last the
schoolmaster annoimced that as the evening was coming
on we had better move down to the village haU, where
the concert was to be held and the speeches made. As
the people began to go out of the room and I to wonder
if I should follow them to the concert, he came up to me
and said :

' Can you tell me now, sir : is it not true that you are
a great comic ? '

' There's none aUve that's greater,' I repUed, not quite
getting what he was driving at, ' and as I know none
Slat's dead, that's the highest praise I have.'

' Ah, that's true, that's true,' continued the schoolmaster
in that clear Inverness-shire voice which quite evades any
of the usual hackneyed attempts at phonetic dialect
spelling so beloved by the local colourists. ' And now
so kind a gendeman as yourself even though he is on
hohday wiU not grudge to help me in my concert. We
have a fine piper, a fme Gaelic singer, a piano player and
(766) 305 ^^

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

a reciter, but the people here are sad for the want of a
comic'

As soon as I understood what he wanted I began the
usual process of polite refusal when, to my disgust, my
commercial friend came up to the group that was begin-
ning to gather round me and said :

' He'll sing for ye, gendemen, only don't press the
little man too far. He's the finest coamic in Gorbals and
that's saying all I can. Ye'U sing diem yon coamic song
you gave me last night,' he said turning to me. I remem-
bered in confusion that I had been so warmed and genial
at Roy Bridge the previous night that I had sung my
French song. And here I made my fatal mistake. Instead
of flatly denying that I could sing a note I went on, with
deprecatory gestures and noises, to imply that I may have
sung or squeded a note or two, but that sort of thing was
merely a bar-parlour trick and was no use for singing
before an audience. I soon understood my error when
they all closed in on me and said that that was all nonsense.
This was not the Albert Hall and any old comic song was
good enough to go down. ' In vain, I protested that I
could not sing before an audience at all ; that the song
was not a comic one.

' Coamic ! ' said the commercial with a wicked wink
at me. ' Coamic ! I laughed till I was nearly deid.
Ye're jist bashful, my friend. Get him on the platform,
gendemen, and he'U bring the house down.'

Now there was so much talking and gaieral noise that
I almost hoped that in the confusion the whole project
might drop, and remained silent neither consenting nor
denying. And then without given reason or apparent
impetus, the crowd began to move off to the hall where
I gathered the meeting and concert were to take place.
It is one of the most amusing and, to the Saxon, most
irritating quaUties of the Celt, that he can, contemptuous

306

MORAY MCLAREN

of time, leave an arrangement unfinished, a discussion, an
essential argument unclinched, hanging in the air and
move off, implying that in some unspoken way every-
thing has been made clear. The initiated (so will his
maddening behaviour suggest) are now, by some secret
understanding, all at one, and there is no further need
with clumsy words and reiteration to make redundant
what has already been so easily comprehended by the
subtle. It was in this way that the crowd around me in
the height of the talk and babble melted away : and I
was left wondering whether I had offended by my
downrightness of refusal or weakly given in through my
timidity.

When the hotel was quite empty, save for servants, 1
had a whisky to fortify me further and settled down in
front of the fire. I decided that clearly I was not expected
to do anything. Even Celtic casualness could not suppose
that I had really consented to make a fool of myself in
public to amuse these dignified villagers. I should, after
the speech was over, go down myself and sit at the back
of the hall. I knew how easily Highland enthusiasm was
aroused and how easily it could be deflected. I should be
allowed to sit quietly and listen to what promised to be
an amusing exhibition of local manners and customs.
So, quite full of courage, I came out of the hotel at about
six o'clock and walked down the collection of few houses
which served as a street, and, deciding to while away a
few minutes so that the concert might be in full swing
before I entered, I went into the Uttle post ofEce-cum-
general stores to buy a few stamps, postcards and bars of
chocolate for my next day's journey.

The post office was just about to close, for the pro-
prietor of the little cottage, a charming old Highlander
with a voice as soft as a child's, was evidently anxious to
seize the very first momerit to be off to the concert.

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THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

There were two litde girls standing in the shop as I
entered, who, with the slow, unspeaking, ungiggling
curiosity which Northern children seem always to have,
looked at me long and embarrassingly. At last one of
them broke silence, and I heard her say to her companion
in that slow whispering voice, for the soimds and mean-
ings of which I was already becoming so sharp, ' Jeaimie,
yon's the hoamic' The last word, which was intended
to be ' comic,' was drawn out incredibly long on the first
syllable, and through the whole sentence there ran the
sighmg sound of the GaeHc speech.

' My children,' I said as I struck a fooUshly affected
attitude, ' daughters of my friends, let me assure you that
however comic I may look, however well may your
Others have entertained me to their admirable whisky,
however melodiously may your handsome brother have
besought me, nothing is going to persuade me to expose
myself to the laughter of this happy valley.' The only
reply to this remark was a repetition — this time as if in
explanation of my folly, ' Jeannie, yon's the hoamic'

Return to Scotland

308

DONALD G MACRAE

The Pterodactyl and Powhatan's Daughter

American poets have seen their country
as a brown girl lying serene in the sun,
as Powhatan's daughter with open thighs,
her belly a golden plain of wheat,
her breasts the firm and fecund hills,
each sinuous vein a river, and in each wrist

the pulse of cataracts.

She has rejected no lover, not the
fanatic English nor the hungry Scot,
tlie trading Dutchman nor the industrious
continental peasant, used to oppression,
the patient stolen negro nor the
laborious Asiatic, schooled to diligent,

ingenious labour.

By aU her lovers she has been fruitful,
has multiplied all numbers, lying
indolent, calm and almost asleep,
only her lake-eyes watchful, expectant
of new wanderers from further shores
seeking her young immortal body,

waiting unsated.

She is patient this girl with her black hair tumbled,
with her earth-bedded, receptive body outstretched,
relaxed and leisured, at ease in the sun.
In her veins the sun-warm blood is coursing,
swift ruiming through the golden body,
obedient to the steadfast heart's command,

the unending beat.

309

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

Not such is our land. It is a skeleton
crushed by the long weight of years, the bone
hard stone, the skin tight on the sinew,
the flesh wasted by long years of hunger.
It is a stone land, a hard land of bone,
of lean muscle and atrophied membrane

ridged over ribs.

This is a pterodactyl land,
lean survivor of ice and the frost,
sea and the parching sun, which,
the last of its kind, is now dying
by inches, blinking and bleeding through the
death shroud of mist, the dissolving film

of steady rain.

We dwell on the stiffening corpse of Scotland,
starved lice on a pauper's body
chiU on a marble slab. Should we leave ?
Should we follow our fathers' pattern,
make love to Powhatan's daughter,
westward refurrow the weary sea ?

We had better not.

She too is a myth : we'd be wise to forget
our symbols, turn from the romantic vision,
the loose-thought personified images of countries,
to study and learn to read, painfully,
the facts of these matters aright, then nourish —
if we have heart — some shght sober hope

of tomorrow.

Poetry Scotland No. 3

310

JAMES FERGUSSON

Portrait of a Gentleman

I HAVE known him, in a sense, ever since my childhood.
Whenever any of my brothers or I came home after long
absence at school or elsewhere, it used to be a regular
ritual for someone to say, ' Have you said " How do you
do ? " to Sir Adam yet ? ' Being thus reminded of a
neglected duty, one would go into the dining-room,
place oneself opposite to the big portrait over the black
marble Victorian mantelpiece, and make the established
inquiry, accompanied by a respectful bow. Sometimes
this salutation was extended to his father and grandfather
or a few other favourites among The Ancestors ; but it
was to Sir Adam that one felt chiefly bound to report
oneself, as it were, on revisiting the family roof-tree.

Sir Adam never unbent so far as to return my bow,
chough I always glanced up at him to see if he would.
Sometimes — ^if, for instance, I had been near the bottom of
my class last term — his eye was a trifle cold, sometimes it
rested on me with grave approval, occasionally it looked
almost benevolent. But anything approaching to
geniality would have been foreign to the dignified pose
in which Raebum's brush had set him there, calm and
upright in his big armchair. There he sat — and there, for
that matter, he still sits — ^in his sober brown coat, with
his hair neatly powdered, his legs, in their black sUk
breeches, composedly crossed, his hands, their fingers
interlocked, resting on his knee, and his chair turned a
little aside from the table on which Ues the letter he has
just been reading. He looks exactly the figure described
in his obituary notice of September 1813 — ' this venerable
and respectable Baronet.'

It was many years before I came — I might almost say
3"

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

' presumed ' — ^to make Sir Adam's closer acquaintance.
The outlines of his life, the fact that he died a bachelor at
the age of eighty, and a few family traditions illustrating
the extreme propriety of his conduct — these at least were
familiar to me ; and I was dimly aware that he had been
a great planter of trees and had laid out most of our
favourite paths through the surrounding woods. The
phrase ' in Sir Adam's time,' appHed to plantations, paths
or farm-houses, denoted to me a vague epoch a Uttle
subsequent to the Creation ; and it was beyond my
youthful imagination to conceive what appearance the
hills and woods of my home might have borne before
his constructive hand had been laid upon them. He
remained a kind of peak in history, an eminent and
dominating figure of the past. No doubt Raebum's art,
and the position of his portrait in the place of honour,
had mudn to do with forming this impression.

I knew that in certain long drawers in another room
there lay a vast collection of Sir Adam's correspondence ;
but it was not until a few years ago that I began to explore
them. What I found there introduced me for the first
time to the vivid reahties of hfe in eighteenth-century
Scotland. It taught me that history was not after all a
dead thing belonging only to the past. And also it led
me at last to appreciate the significance of that letter on
the table in Sir Adam's portrait.

Sir Adam had been what is known as a voluminous
correspondent. From about 1756 till a few months
before his death he seemed to have preserved almost
every letter of importance he received, and, in many
cases, copies of his answers. From this mass of documents
and some research in books, it was possible to piece
together in fascinating detail large periods of his indus-
trious hfe in the Scotland of Boswell and Bums : his
' grand tour ' as a young man, his interests and fiiend-

312

JAMES FERGUSSON

ships, his career at the Scottish Bar and in Parliament,
and his loving and methodical care for the family estate
to which he succeeded in 1759.

For several years now the exploration and reconstruc-
tion of Sir Adam's Hfe has been one of my major interests.
I have not yet got to the end of his correspondence.
Sometimes I doubt if I ever shall. He was a man -who
never left a letter unanswered, and seldom wrote in one
sentence what could be more politely expressed in three.
Many people would caU him a dull correspondent. To
me he is a perpetual delight. As he winds his way through
clause within clause of each elaborate paragraph, with
that neat and flourishing handwriting, as careful in his
old age as in his youth, and with grammar so faultless
and punctuation so meticulous that any one of his letters
might be printed without editing as it stands, I follow
him with die appreciation of a musical critic Ustening to
the imravelling of a well-scored fugue. Today I know
him as intimately as a favourite imcle ; and neither long-
windedness, formality nor an almost total absence of
humour obscures my admiration of him.

His letters contain no original thoughts, and his
frequent good advice to his nephew and heir consists
chiefly of gracefully expressed platitude. But his sincerity
is never in doubt ; his advice, if trite, is invariably sound,
for he was a very wise and sensible man ; and no-one
practised more thoroughly the virtues of honesty, industry
and public service which he preached. He deserved
Bums's eulogy of him — ' aith-detesting, chaste Kilkerran '
— and he was too sympathetic to be a prig.

I will not write of his long political career — he was a
good politician, but not made for a statesman — ^nor of the
entertaining but complicated electioneering intrigues
which form the subject of many of his letters. Nor, for
the sake of space, wUl I touch on his clashes with Boswell,

313

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

his friendship with that versatile and charming man
George Dempster of Durmichen (whose letters to him
I have publuhed elsewhere) or their tireless efforts,
including an arduous journey through the greater part of
the Hebrides, to work out a scheme for checking High-
land emigration by establishing fishing stations on the
West Coast. Sir Adam's long life and vwde acquaintance
with politicians and men of letters would fill a book. It
is only one side of his busy career that concerns me now :
the activities that transformed the fields, woods and roads
of his corner of Ayrshire, and thereby provided his most
enduring memorial.

Sir Adam was one of the ' improving ' lairds — i body
of men which has never, I think, received proper recogni-
tion for the services they rendered to Scotland, though
a great deal of what is good in rural Scotland today is due
to their labours. ' Improving * often ran in families, and
it did so in Sir Adam's. His father — z Lord of Session —
was planting trees, tiuming moorland into pasture and
laying out policies away back in George I's time. His
yoimger brother, also a judge, the amiably impulsive
Lord Hermand, became rather late in life an improver in
his turn, and farmed in West Lothian with a zeal which was
almost fanatical. Sir Adam's own improvements were
business-like and thorough. A full account of the earUer
ones is given in Andrew Wight's Recent State of Husbandry
in. Scotland, whose author, when he visited Carrick in
1777, ' saw various operations of husbandry carried on
with industry and attention, the inclosures in perfection,
both hedges and stone walls,' and praised the ' progress of
agriculture in that part of the country ' as being ' chiefly
owing to Sir Adam himself

Sir Adam, in a letter to Wight, recalled the backward
state of agriculture in Carrick a few years earher, ' when
there was scarce an inclosure in it but some few round

314

JAMES FERGUS SON

the gentlemen's houses, when there was not a pound of
grass seed sown from one end of it to the other, and when
the whole attention of the farmer, and the whole dung
of the farm, was apphed to a few acres, while the rest was
totally neglected.'

I can give no better account of Sir Adam's improve-
ments than his own, which is more directly and economic-
ally expressed than many of his private letters :

' My object has been to turn the farms in my own
possession into good grass as soon as possible. . . . The
trouble "and expense that I have bestowed on this object
has been much greater than any person would conceive
from the quantity of ground that I have improved, with-
out considering what it was in its natural state. You
cannot fail to have observed the multitude of large stones
upon the uncultivated fields in this country ; most of
these are of such a size as to require being blasted with
gunpowder before they are carried off. As the soil runs
naturally to wood, there is a necessity of clearing the fields
of shrubs and bushes before they can be properly ploughed.
If to this is added the expense of draining, you wUl not be
surprised at my saying that many fields cost more than
their original price before the plough is put into the
ground.'

By the 1780s, however, all the farms on the estate were
enclosed, and the wasteful old run-rig system was a thing
of the past. Pasture had greatly improved, and the
farmers had learnt, by example, the importance of keeping
their land in good heart. Lime was made available in
large quantities from a quarry on the estate. The breed
of sheep also had been much improved by the importation
of Dorchester and Bakewell rams. Elaborate draining
had been carried out on the lower ground, and hundreds
of acres had been planted with trees.

At the end of the century Sir Adam's correspondence
315

THE THISTLE AND THE PEN

shows him busy with road-making, hnking up his neigh-
bourhood with Maybole and Ayr to the north and
Girvan to the south, and providing an outlet for the coal
which Hamilton of Bargany and Kennedy of Dunure
were working on their respective properties on the
north side of the valley. He bdlt two high stone bridges
over the Water of Girvan, of simple and beautiful
design, which still stand today as good as new. In these
days, when Government and local authorities make
roads with pubHc money, it is ojften forgotten how much,
a hundred and fifty years ago, was left, and sometimes
very successfully left, to private enterprise. When I
watch the buses speeding northwards beside the Water
of Girvan, I often recall with a secret pleasure that their
unconscious passengers are travelling not only beneath
Sir Adam's trees and beside his fields, but over one of
his bridges and along his road, made by his initiative,
according to his plan, and largely at his expense.

To these activities Sir Adam devoted his declining and
gout-ridden years, combining with them the care of a
large family of nephews and nieces of two generations
who looked up to him as to a father. He owned himself
' heartily tired ' of Parhament, and declined the offer of
Henry Dundas (suggested by George III himself) that he
should go to India as Governor of Madras. With an
occasional grumble of a kind grown more common since
his day — ' this Income Tax is a galling one ' — ^he settled
dovsni to spend the rest of his hfe at home. ' Ille terrarum,'
he might have quoted, ' mihi praeter omnes angulus ridet ' ;
and he found everything about it perfect, even the
climate. ' There is not probably a milder air in the
winter months than that in which I now sit,' he wrote
in January 1809 ; and in another letter, written in a
sinular season, he sums up the contentment of his quiet
but stiU active hfe :

316

JAMES FERGUSSON

' We have had a deUghtful winter . . . without snow,
of which we have not had three days during the whole
season. The air is now delightful, and the birds singing
as in spring. Five or six large trees were blown down
here ; among which one of the largest beeches above the
house. But enough remain : and I think, upon a
moderate computation, for every one blown down, I
plant 5,000.'

Scotland 1938

317

SIR ALEXANDER GRAY

Scotland

Here in the Uplands
The soil is ungratefiil ;
The fields, red with sorrel.

Are stony and bare.
A few trees, wind-twisted —
Or are they but bushes ? —
Stand stubbornly guarding

A home here and there.

Scooped out like a saucer.
The land lies before me ;
The waters, once scattered,

Flow orderedly now
Through fields where the ghosts
Of the marsh and the moorland
StiU ride the old marches,

Despising the plough.

The marsh and the moorland
Are not to be banished ;
The bracken and heather.

The glory of broom,
Usurp all the balks
And the fields' broken fringes.
And claim from the sower

Their portion of room.

This is my country.
The land that begat me.
These windy spaces
Are surely my own.
318

SIR ALEXANDER GRAY

And those who here toil
In the sweat of their faces
Are flesh of my flesh,
And bone of my bone.

Hard is the day's task —
Scotland, stem Mother ! —
Wherewith at all times

Thy sons have been faced :
Labour by day,

And scant rest in the gloaming.
With Want an attendant.

Not. lightly outpaced.

Yet do thy children

Honour and love thee.

Harsh is thy schooling,

Yet great is the gain :

True hearts and strong Umbs,

The beauty of faces.

Kissed by the wind

And caressed by the rain.

Gossip

319

raiNTED IN GREAT BRITAIN AT
THE PRESS OF THE PUBUSHBRS