While I Was At Luncheon Four Carters Came In - Long-Limbed, Muscular
Ayrshire Scots, With Lean, Intelligent Faces.
Four quarts of stout
were ordered; they kept filling the tumbler with the other hand as
they drank; and
In less time than it takes me to write these words
the four quarts were finished - another round was proposed,
discussed, and negatived - and they were creaking out of the village
with their carts.
The ruins drew you towards them. You never saw any place more
desolate from a distance, nor one that less belied its promise near
at hand. Some crows and gulls flew away croaking as I scrambled
in. The snow had drifted into the vaults. The clachan dabbled
with snow, the white hills, the black sky, the sea marked in the
coves with faint circular wrinkles, the whole world, as it looked
from a loop-hole in Dunure, was cold, wretched, and out-at-elbows.
If you had been a wicked baron and compelled to stay there all the
afternoon, you would have had a rare fit of remorse. How you would
have heaped up the fire and gnawed your fingers! I think it would
have come to homicide before the evening - if it were only for the
pleasure of seeing something red! And the masters of Dunure, it is
to be noticed, were remarkable of old for inhumanity. One of these
vaults where the snow had drifted was that 'black route' where 'Mr.
Alane Stewart, Commendatour of Crossraguel,' endured his fiery
trials. On the 1st and 7th of September 1570 (ill dates for Mr.
Alan!), Gilbert, Earl of Cassilis, his chaplain, his baker, his
cook, his pantryman, and another servant, bound the Poor
Commendator 'betwix an iron chimlay and a fire,' and there cruelly
roasted him until he signed away his abbacy. it is one of the
ugliest stories of an ugly period, but not, somehow, without such a
flavour of the ridiculous as makes it hard to sympathise quite
seriously with the victim. And it is consoling to remember that he
got away at last, and kept his abbacy, and, over and above, had a
pension from the Earl until he died.
Some way beyond Dunure a wide bay, of somewhat less unkindly
aspect, opened out. Colzean plantations lay all along the steep
shore, and there was a wooded hill towards the centre, where the
trees made a sort of shadowy etching over the snow. The road went
down and up, and past a blacksmith's cottage that made fine music
in the valley. Three compatriots of Burns drove up to me in a
cart. They were all drunk, and asked me jeeringly if this was the
way to Dunure. I told them it was; and my answer was received with
unfeigned merriment. One gentleman was so much tickled he nearly
fell out of the cart; indeed, he was only saved by a companion, who
either had not so fine a sense of humour or had drunken less.
'The toune of Mayboll,' says the inimitable Abercrummie, {3}
'stands upon an ascending ground from east to west, and lyes open
to the south. It hath one principals street, with houses upon both
sides, built of freestone; and it is beautifyed with the situation
of two castles, one at each end of this street. That on the east
belongs to the Erle of Cassilis. On the west end is a castle,
which belonged sometime to the laird of Blairquan, which is now the
tolbuith, and is adorned with a pyremide [conical roof], and a row
of ballesters round it raised from the top of the staircase, into
which they have mounted a fyne clock. There be four lanes which
pass from the principall street; one is called the Black Vennel,
which is steep, declining to the south-west, and leads to a lower
street, which is far larger than the high chiefe street, and it
runs from the Kirkland to the Well Trees, in which there have been
many pretty buildings, belonging to the severall gentry of the
countrey, who were wont to resort thither in winter, and divert
themselves in converse together at their owne houses. It was once
the principall street of the town; but many of these houses of the
gentry having been decayed and ruined, it has lost much of its
ancient beautie. Just opposite to this vennel, there is another
that leads north-west, from the chiefe street to the green, which
is a pleasant plott of ground, enclosed round with an earthen wall,
wherein they were wont to play football, but now at the Gowff and
byasse-bowls. The houses of this towne, on both sides of the
street, have their several gardens belonging to them; and in the
lower street there be some pretty orchards, that yield store of
good fruit.' As Patterson says, this description is near enough
even to-day, and is mighty nicely written to boot. I am bound to
add, of my own experience, that Maybole is tumbledown and dreary.
Prosperous enough in reality, it has an air of decay; and though
the population has increased, a roofless house every here and there
seems to protest the contrary. The women are more than well-
favoured, and the men fine tall fellows; but they look slipshod and
dissipated. As they slouched at street corners, or stood about
gossiping in the snow, it seemed they would have been more at home
in the slums of a large city than here in a country place betwixt a
village and a town. I heard a great deal about drinking, and a
great deal about religious revivals: two things in which the
Scottish character is emphatic and most unlovely. In particular, I
heard of clergymen who were employing their time in explaining to a
delighted audience the physics of the Second Coming. It is not
very likely any of us will be asked to help. if we were, it is
likely we should receive instructions for the occasion, and that on
more reliable authority.
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