The Book-Hunter, John Hill Burton [essential reading TXT] 📗
- Author: John Hill Burton
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Your harmless mirth has cheered my heart,"
and ending with this fine and genial touch—
Be canty, but be good and leal;
Your ain ills aye hae heart to bear,
Another's aye hae heart to feel:
So, ere I set I'll see you shine,
I'll see you triumph ere I fa';
My parting breath shall boast you mine.
Good-night, and joy be wi' you a'."
His "Auld Gudeman, ye're a drucken carle," "Jenny's Bawbee," and "Jenny dang the Weaver," are of another kind, and perhaps fuller of the peculiar spirit of the man. This consisted in hitting off the deeper and typical characteristics of Scottish life with an easy touch that brings it all home at once. His lines do not seem as if they were composed by an effort of talent, but as if they were the spontaneous expressions of nature.
Take the following specimen of ludicrous pomposity, which must suffer a little by being quoted from memory: it describes a Highland procession:—
Wi' their pipers on afore 'em;
Proud the mithers are that bore 'em,
Fee fuddle, fau fum.
Ilka ane his sword an' durk has,
Ilka ane as proud's a Turk is,
Fee fuddle, fau fum."
To comprehend the spirit of this, one must endow himself with the feelings of a Lowland Scot before Waverley and Rob Roy imparted a glow of romantic interest to the Highlanders. The pompous and the ludicrous were surely never more happily interwoven. One would require to go further back still to appreciate the spirit of "Skeldon Haughs, or the Sow is Flitted." It is a picture of old Ayrshire feudal rivalry and hatred. The Laird of Bargainy resolved to humiliate his neighbour and enemy, the Laird of Kerse, by a forcible occupation of part of his territory. For the purpose of making this aggression flagrantly insulting, it was done by tethering or staking a female pig on the domain of Kerse. The animal was, of course, attended by a sufficient body of armed men for her protection. It was necessary for his honour that the Laird of Kerse should drive the animal and her attendants away, and hence came a bloody battle about "the flitting of the sow." In the contest, Kerse's eldest son and hope, Jock, is killed, and the point or moral of the narrative is, the contempt with which the old laird looks on that event, as compared with the grave affair of flitting the sow. A retainer who comes to tell him the result of the battle stammers in his narrative on account of his grief for Jock, and is thus pulled up by the laird—
'Gie me an answer, short and plain—
Is the sow flitted, yammerin' wean?'"
To which the answer is—
And at her back the Crawfords clatter;
The Carrick couts are cowed and bitted.'"
Hereupon the laird's exultation breaks forth,—
Another man of genius and learning, whose name is a household one among the book clubs, is Robert Surtees, the historian of Durham. You may hunt for it in vain among the biographical dictionaries. Let us hope that this deficiency will be well supplied in the Biographia Britannica, projected by Mr Murray. Surtees was not certainly among those who flare their qualities before the world—he was to a peculiar degree addicted, as we shall shortly see, to hiding his light under a bushel; and so any little notice of him in actual flesh and blood, such as this left by his friend, the Rev. James Tate, master of Richmond School, interests one:—
"One evening I was sitting alone—it was about nine o'clock in the middle of summer—there came a gentle tap at the door. I opened the door myself, and a gentleman said with great modesty, 'Mr Tate, I am Mr Surtees of Mainsforth. James Raine begged I would call upon you.' 'The master of Richmond School is delighted to see you,' said I; 'pray walk in.' 'No, thank you, sir; I have ordered a bit of supper; perhaps you will walk up with me?' 'To be sure I will;' and away we went. As we went along, I quoted a line from the Odyssey. What was my astonishment to hear from Mr Surtees, not the next only, but line after line of the passage I had touched upon. Said I to myself, 'Good Master Tate, take heed; it is not often you catch such a fellow as this at Richmond.' I never spent such an evening in my life." What a pity, then, that he did not give us more of the evening, which seems to have left joyful memories to both: for Surtees himself thus commemorated it in macaronics, in which he was an adept:—
Ad Coronam prandet ridet,
Spargit sales cum cachinno,
Lepido ore et concinno,
Ubique carus inter bonos
Rubei montis præsens honos."
In the same majestic folio in which this anecdote may be found—the Memoir prefixed to the History of Durham—we are likewise told how, when at college, he was waiting on a Don on business; and, feeling coldish, stirred the fire. "Pray, Mr Surtees," said the great man, "do you think that any other undergraduate in the college would have taken that liberty?" "Yes, Mr Dean," was the reply—"any one as cool as I am!" This would have been not unworthy of Brummell. The next is not in Brummell's line. Arguing with a neighbour about his not going to church, the man said, "Why, sir, the parson and I have quarrelled about the tithes." "You fool," was the reply, "is that any reason why you should go to hell?" Yet another. A poor man, with a numerous family, lost his only cow. Surtees was collecting a subscription to replace the loss, and called on the Bishop of Lichfield, who was Dean of Durham, and owner of the great tithes in the parish, to ascertain what he would give. "Give!" said the bishop; "why, a cow, to be sure. Go, Mr Surtees, to my steward, and tell him to give you as much money as will buy the best cow you can find." Surtees, astonished at this unexpected generosity, said—"My Lord, I hope you will ride to heaven upon the back of that cow." A while afterwards he was saluted in the college by the late Lord Barrington, with—"Surtees, what is the absurd speech that I hear you have been making to the dean?" "I see nothing absurd in it," was the reply; "when the dean rides to heaven on the back of that cow, many of you prebendaries will be glad to lay hold of her tail!"
I have noted these innocent trifles concerning one who is chiefly known as a deep and dry investigator, for the purpose of propitiating the reader in his favour, since the sacred cause of truth renders it necessary to refer to another affair in which his conduct, however trifling it might be, was not innocent. He was addicted to literary practical jokes of an audacious kind, and carried his presumption so far as to impose on Sir Walter Scott a spurious ballad which has a place in the Border Minstrelsy. Nor is it by any means a servile imitation, which might pass unnoticed in a crowd of genuine and better ballads; but it is one of the most spirited and one of the most thoroughly endowed with individual character in the whole collection. This guilty composition is known as "The Death of Featherstonhaugh," and begins thus:—
Ha' ye heard how the Ridleys, and Thirlwalls, and a',
Ha' set upon Albany Featherstonhaugh,
And taken his life at the Dead Man's Haugh?
There was Williemoteswick
And Hardriding Dick,
And Hughie of Hawdon, and Will of the Wa',
I canna tell a', I canna tell a',
And many a mair that the deil may knaw.
Ran awa' afore the fight was begun;
And he run, and he run,
And afore they were done
There was many a Featherston gat sic a stun,
As never was seen since the world begun.
I canna tell a', I canna tell a',
Some got a skelp and some got a claw,
But they gar't the Featherstons haud their jaw.
Some got a hurt, and some got nane,
Some had harness, and some got staen."
This imposture, professing to be taken down from the recitation of a woman eighty years old, was accompanied with some explanatory notes, characteristic of the dry antiquary, thus: "Hardriding Dick is not an epithet referring to horsemanship, but means Richard Ridley of Hardriding, the seat of another family of that name, which, in the time of Charles I., was sold on account of expenses incurred by the loyalty of the proprietor, the immediate ancestor of Sir Matthew Ridley. Will o' the Wa' seems to be William Ridley of Walltown, so called from its situation on the great Roman wall. Thirlwall Castle, whence the clan of Thirlwalls derived their name, is situated on the small river of Tippell, near the western boundary of Northumberland. It is near the wall, and takes its name from the rampart having been thirled—that is, pierced or breached—in its vicinity."
In the Life of Surtees, the evidence of the crime is thus dryly set forth, in following up a statement of the transmission of the manuscript, and of its publication: "Yet all this was a mere figment of Surtees's imagination, originating probably in some whim of ascertaining how far he could identify himself with the stirring times, scenes, and poetical compositions which his fancy delighted to dwell on. This is proved by more than one copy among his papers of this ballad, corrected and interlined, in order to mould it to the language, the manners, and the feelings of the period and of the district to which it refers. Mr Surtees no doubt had wished to have the success of his attempt tested by the unbiassed opinion of the very first authority on the subject; and the result must have been gratifying to him."
In Scott's acknowledgment of the contribution, printed also in the Life of Surtees, there are some words that must have brought misgivings and fear of detection to the heart of the culprit, since Scott, without apparently allowing doubts to enter his mind, yet marked some peculiarities in the piece, in which it differed from others. "Your notes upon the parties concerned give it all the interest of authority, and it must rank, I suppose, among those half-serious, half-ludicrous songs, in which the poets of the Border delighted to describe what they considered as the sport of swords. It is perhaps remarkable, though it may be difficult to guess a reason, that these Cumbrian ditties are of a different stanza and character, and obviously sung to a different kind of music, from those on the northern Border. The gentleman who collected the words may perhaps be able to describe the tune."
There is perhaps no system of ethics which lays down with perfect precision the
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