The Pirate
had become possessed with a notion, in itself a very true one, that much
might be done to render this grant available, by improving the culture
of the crown lands, both in Orkney and Zetland; and then having some
acquaintance with our friend Triptolemus, he thought (rather less
happily) that he might prove a person capable of furthering his schemes.
He sent for him to the great Hallhouse, and was so much edified by the
way in which our friend laid down the law upon every given subject
relating to rural economy, that he lost no time in securing the
co-operation of so valuable an assistant, the first step being to
release him from his present unprofitable farm.
The terms were arranged much to the mind of Triptolemus, who had already
been taught, by many years' experience, a dark sort of notion, that
without undervaluing or doubting for a moment his own skill, it would be
quite as well that almost all the trouble and risk should be at the
expense of his employer. Indeed, the hopes of advantage which he held
out to his patron were so considerable, that the Lord Chamberlain
dropped every idea of admitting his dependent into any share of the
expected profits; for, rude as the arts of agriculture were in Scotland,
they were far superior to those known and practised in the regions of
Thule, and Triptolemus Yellowley conceived himself to be possessed of a
degree of insight into these mysteries, far superior to what was
possessed or practised even in the Mearns. The improvement, therefore,
which was to be expected, would bear a double proportion, and the Lord
Chamberlain was to reap all the profit, deducting a handsome salary for
his steward Yellowley, together with the accommodation of a house and
domestic farm, for the support of his family. Joy seized the heart of
Mistress Barbara, at hearing this happy termination of what threatened
to be so very bad an affair as the lease of Cauldacres.
"If we cannot," she said, "provide for our own house, when all is coming
in, and nothing going out, surely we must be worse than infidels!"
Triptolemus was a busy man for some time, huffing and puffing, and
eating and drinking in every changehouse, while he ordered and collected
together proper implements of agriculture, to be used by the natives of
these devoted islands, whose destinies were menaced with this formidable
change. Singular tools these would seem, if presented before a modern
agricultural society; but every thing is relative, nor could the heavy
cartload of timber, called the old Scots plough, seem less strange to a
Scottish farmer of this present day, than the corslets and casques of
the soldiers of Cortes might seem to a regiment of our own army. Yet the
latter conquered Mexico, and undoubtedly the former would have been a
splendid improvement on the state of agriculture in Thule.
We have never been able to learn why Triptolemus preferred fixing his
residence in Zetland, to becoming an inhabitant of the Orkneys. Perhaps
he thought the inhabitants of the latter Archipelago the more simple and
docile of the two kindred tribes; or perhaps he considered the situation
of the house and farm he himself was to occupy, (which was indeed a
tolerable one,) as preferable to that which he had it in his power to
have obtained upon Pomona (so the main island of the Orkneys is
entitled). At Harfra, or, as it was sometimes called, Stourburgh, from
the remains of a Pictish fort, which was almost close to the
mansion-house, the factor settled himself, in the plenitude of his
authority; determined to honour the name he bore by his exertions, in
precept and example, to civilize the Zetlanders, and improve their very
confined knowledge in the primary arts of human life.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] The cormorant; which may be seen frequently dashing in wild flight
along the roosts and tides of Zetland, and yet more often drawn up in
ranks on some ledge of rock, like a body of the Black Brunswickers in
181.
[20] _i. e._ Gossips.
[21] Quadrupedumque putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum.
[22] This is admitted by the English agriculturist:--
"My music since has been the plough,
Entangled with some care among;
The gain not great, the pain enough,
Hath made me sing another song."
[23] GOVERNMENT OF ZETLAND.--At the period supposed, the Earls of Morton
held the islands of Orkney and Zetland, originally granted in 1643,
confirmed in 1707, and rendered absolute in 1742. This gave the family
much property and influence, which they usually exercised by factors,
named chamberlains. In 1766 this property was sold by the then Earl of
Morton to Sir Lawrence Dundas, by whose son, Lord Dundas, it is now
held.
CHAPTER V.
The wind blew keen frae north and east;
It blew upon the floor.
Quo' our goodman to our goodwife,
"Get up and bar the door."
"My hand is in my housewife-skep,
Goodman, as ye may see;
If it shouldna be barr'd this hundred years,
It's no be barr'd for me!"
_Old Song._
We can only hope that the gentle reader has not found the latter part of
the last chapter extremely tedious; but, at any rate, his impatience
will scarce equal that of young Mordaunt Mertoun, who, while the
lightning came flash after flash, while the wind, veering and shifting
from point to point, blew with all the fury of a hurricane, and while
the rain was dashed against him in deluges, stood hammering, calling,
and roaring at the door of the old Place of Harfra, impatient for
admittance, and at a loss to conceive any position of existing
circumstances, which could occasion the exclusion of a stranger,
especially during such horrible weather. At length, finding his noise
and vociferation were equally in vain, he fell back so far from the
front of the house, as was necessary to enable him to reconnoitre the
chimneys; and amidst "storm and shade," could discover, to the increase
of his dismay, that though noon, then the dinner hour of these islands,
was now nearly arrived, there was no smoke proceeding from the tunnels
of the vents to give any note of preparation within.
Mordaunt's wrathful impatience was now changed into sympathy and alarm;
for, so long accustomed to the exuberant hospitality of the Zetland
islands, he was immediately induced to suppose some strange and
unaccountable disaster had befallen the family; and forthwith set
himself to discover some place at which he could make forcible entry, in
order to ascertain the situation of the inmates, as much as to obtain
shelter from the still increasing storm. His present anxiety was,
however, as much thrown away as his late clamorous importunities for
admittance had been. Triptolemus and his sister had heard the whole
alarm without, and had already had a sharp dispute on the propriety of
opening the door.
Mrs. Baby, as we have described her, was no willing renderer of the
rites of hospitality. In their farm of Cauldacres, in the Mearns, she
had been the dread and abhorrence of all gaberlunzie men, and travelling
packmen, gipsies, long remembered beggars, and so forth; nor was there
one of them so wily, as she used to boast, as could ever say they had
heard the clink of her sneck. In Zetland, where the new settlers were
yet strangers to the extreme honesty and simplicity of all classes,
suspicion and fear joined with frugality in her desire to exclude all
wandering guests of uncertain character; and the second of these motives
had its effect on Triptolemus himself, who, though neither suspicious
nor penurious, knew good people were scarce, good farmers scarcer, and
had a reasonable share of that wisdom which looks towards
self-preservation as the first law of nature. These hints may serve as
a commentary on the following dialogue which took place betwixt the
brother and sister.
"Now, good be gracious to us," said Triptolemus, as he sat thumbing his
old school-copy of Virgil, "here is a pure day, for the bear seed!--Well
spoke the wise Mantuan--_ventis surgentibus_--and then the groans of the
mountains, and the long-resounding shores--but where's the woods, Baby?
tell me, I say, where we shall find the _nemorum murmur_, sister Baby,
in these new seats of ours?"
"What's your foolish will?" said Baby, popping her head from out of a
dark recess in the kitchen, where she was busy about some nameless deed
of housewifery.
Her brother, who had addressed himself to her more from habit than
intention, no sooner saw her bleak red nose, keen grey eyes, with the
sharp features thereunto conforming, shaded by the flaps of the loose
_toy_ which depended on each side of her eager face, than he bethought
himself that his query was likely to find little acceptation from her,
and therefore stood another volley before he would resume the topic.
"I say, Mr. Yellowley," said sister Baby, coming into the middle of the
room, "what for are ye crying on me, and me in the midst of my
housewifeskep?"
"Nay, for nothing at all, Baby," answered Triptolemus, "saving that I
was saying to myself, that here we had the sea, and the wind, and the
rain, sufficient enough, but where's the wood? where's the wood, Baby,
answer me that?"
"The wood?" replied Baby--"Were I no to take better care of the wood
than you, brother, there would soon be no more wood about the town than
the barber's block that's on your own shoulders, Triptolemus. If ye be
thinking of the wreck-wood that the callants brought in yesterday, there
was six ounces of it gaed to boil your parritch this morning; though, I
trow, a carefu' man wad have ta'en drammock, if breakfast he behoved to
have, rather than waste baith meltith and fuel in the same morning."
"That is to say, Baby," replied Triptolemus, who was somewhat of a dry
joker in his way, "that when we have fire we are not to have food, and
when we have food we are not to have fire, these being too great
blessings to enjoy both in the same day! Good luck, you do not propose
we should starve with cold and starve with hunger _unico contextu_. But,
to tell you the truth, I could never away with raw oatmeal, slockened
with water, in all my life. Call it drammock, or crowdie, or just what
ye list, my vivers must thole fire and water."
"The mair gowk you," said Baby; "can ye not make your brose on the
Sunday, and sup them cauld on the Monday, since ye're sae dainty? Mony
is the fairer face than yours that has licked the lip after such a
cogfu'."
"Mercy on us, sister!" said Triptolemus; "at this rate, it's a finished
field with me--I must unyoke the pleugh, and lie down to wait for the
dead-thraw. Here is that in this house wad hold all Zetland in meal for
a twelvemonth, and ye grudge a cogfu' of warm parritch to me, that has
sic a charge!"
"Whisht--haud your silly clavering tongue!" said Baby, looking round
with apprehension--"ye are a wise man to speak of what is in the house,
and a fitting man to have the charge of it!--Hark, as I live by bread,
I hear a tapping at the outer yett!"
"Go and open it then, Baby," said her brother, glad at any thing that
promised to interrupt the dispute.
"Go and open it, said he!" echoed Baby, half angry, half frightened, and
half triumphant at the superiority of her understanding over that of her
brother--"Go and open it, said he, indeed!--is it to lend robbers a
chance to take all that is in the house?"
"Robbers!" echoed Triptolemus, in his turn; "there are no more robbers
in this country than there are lambs at Yule. I tell you, as I have told
you an hundred times, there are no Highlandmen to harry us here. This is
a land of quiet and honesty. _O fortunati nimium!_"
"And what good is Saint Rinian to do ye, Tolimus?" said his sister,
mistaking the quotation for a Catholic invocation. "Besides, if there be