The Project Gutenberg eBook, The McBrides, by John Sillars

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Title: The McBrides A Romance of Arran

Author: John Sillars

Release Date: October 22, 2007 [eBook #23152]

Language: English

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MCBRIDES***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE McBRIDES

A Romance of Arran

by

JOHN SILLARS

Fifth Impression

The Ryerson Press, Toronto
William Blackwood and Sons
Edinburgh and London
1922

TO

MY MOTHER

LIST OF GAELIC NAMES AND EXPRESSIONS.

  Crotal, lichen.
  "A traill," you sluggard.
  Cleiteadh mor, big ridge of rocks.
  Bothanairidh, summer sheiling.
  Birrican, a place name.
  Rhuda ban, white headland.
  Bealach an sgadan, Herring slap.
  Skein dubh, black knife.
  Crubach, lame.
  Mo ghaoil, my darling.
  Direach sin, (just that), (now do you see).
  Lag 'a bheithe, hollow of the birch.
  Mo bhallach, my boy.
  Ceilidh, visit (meeting of friends); ceilidhing; ceilidher.
  Cha neil, negative, no.
  Mo leanabh, my child.
  Cailleachs, old women.
  Og, young.
  Mhari nic Cloidh, Mary Fullarton.

CONTENTS.

PART I.

CHAP.

      I. WHICH TELLS OF THE COMING OF THE GIPSY
     II. MAKES SOME MENTION OF ONE JOCK McGILP, AND TELLS HOW BELLE
         BROUGHT THE WEAN IN THE TARTAN SHAWL INTO THE HOUSE OF NOURN
    III. IN WHICH I CHASE DEER AND SEE STRANGE HORSEMEN ON THE HILL,
         AND A LIGHT FLASHING ON THE SEA
     IV. I MEET JOCK McGILP AND HIS MATE McNEILAGE AT THE TUBS' INN,
         AND LEARN WHAT HAS BECOME OF THE WEAN IN THE TARTAN SHAWL
      V. MIRREN STUART'S ERRAND
     VI. WE TRAMP THROUGH THE SNOW TO McKELVIE'S INN
    VII. WE SAIL IN McKELVIE'S SKIFF TO THE HOLY ISLAND
   VIII. THE DEATH OF McDEARG, THE RED LAIRD
     IX. MIRREN STUART BIDS HER DOG LIE DOWN
      X. DOL BEAG IS FLUNG INTO A FIRE
     XI. THE BLAZING WHINS
    XII. McALLAN'S LOCKER
   XIII. DAN McBRIDE SAILS FROM LOCH BANZA
    XIV. WE RETURN
     XV. THE STRANGER ON THE MOORS
    XVI. I HAVE SOME TALK WITH McGILP IN McKINNON'S KITCHEN

PART II.

   XVII. I TURN SCHOOLMASTER
  XVIII. THE FIRST MEETING
    XIX. THE RIDERS ON THE MOOR
     XX. "THE LOVE SECRET"
    XXI. DOL BEAG LAUGHS
   XXII. THE SHAMELESS LASS
  XXIII. HELEN AND BRYDE McBRIDE REST AT THE FOOT OF THE URIE
   XXIV. THE HALFLIN'S MESSAGE
    XXV. I RIDE AGAIN TO McALLAN'S LOCKER
   XXVI. A WEDDING ON THE DOORSTEP
  XXVII. MARGARET McBRIDE KISSES HELEN
 XXVIII. IN WHICH BETTY COMPLAINS OF GROWING-PAINS
   XXIX. THE RAKING BLACK SCHOONER
    XXX. TELLS WHERE BRYDE MET HAMISH OG
   XXXI. BRYDE AND MARGARET
  XXXII. BRYDE AND HELEN
 XXXIII. HOW JOHN McCOOK HEARS OF THE PLOY AT THE CLATES
  XXXIV. WHAT CAME OF THE PLOY
   XXXV. DOL BEAG LAUGHS AGAIN

THE McBRIDES.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.

WHICH TELLS OF THE COMING OF THE GIPSY.

It was April among the hills, waes me, the far-away days of my youth, when the hills were smiling through the mists of their tears, and the green grasses thrusting themselves through the withered mat of the pasture like slender fairy swords. April in the hills, with the curlews crying far out on the moorside, past the Red Ground my grandfather wrought, and where again the heather will creep down, rig on rig, for all the stone dykes, deer fences, and tile drains that ever a man put money in. I never knew why it was they called it "Red Ground," for it was mostly black peaty soil, but my grandfather would be saying, "It will be growing corn. Give it wrack, and it will be growing corn for evermore."

They tell me he was a great farmer for all he was laird, and never happier than at his own plough tail, breaking a colt to work in chains; and he it was who improved the stock in cattle and horse in our glens, for he would be aye telling the young farmers, "Gie the quey calves plenty o' milk, as much as they'll lash into themselves. Be good to them when the baby flesh is on them, and they'll grow and thrive, and your siller'll a' come back in the milking."

The countryside clavered and havered when he bought his pedigree bulls and his pedigree mares. "It's money clean wasted," said the old farmers, "for a calf's a calf no odds what begets it, and a horse that can work in chains and take its turn on the road is horse enough for any man, without sinking money in dumb beasts, and a' this sire-and-dam pother." It would anger the old man that talk, ay, even when he was the old frail frame of what once he was,—like a dead and withered ash-tree, dourly awaiting the death gale to send it crashing down, to lie where once its shade fell in the hot summer days of its youth,—and the blood would rise up on his neck, where the flesh had shrunk like old cracked parchment, and left cords and pipes of arteries and veins, gnarled like old ivy round a tree.

Querulous he was and ill-tempered with the scoffers. "Man, if I had twenty more years I would grow hoofs on your horse and udders on your in-coming queys." Well, well, I'm fond of this farming, but I have set out to tell a tale, which in my poor fancy should even be like a rotation of crops, from the breaking in of the lea to the sowing out in grass, with the sun and winds and sweet rains to ripen and swell the grain—the crying of the harvesters and the laughing of lassies among the stocks in the gloaming, the neighing of horse and the lowing of kine in the evening.

On that morning so long ago Dan and I were ploughing stubble, and I followed my horses in all joy, laughing to see them snap as I turned them in at the head-rigs, and coaxing them as they threw their big glossy shoulders into the collar on the brae face. So the morning wore on as I ploughed, with maybe a word now and then to Dick, and a touch of the rein to Darling, and the sea-gulls screaming after us as the good land was turned over. The sun came glinting through the hill mist, and the green buds were bursting in the hedgerows for very gladness.

I was free from the college, free from the smoke-wrack and the grime of the town, free to hear the birds awake and singing in the planting behind the stackyard, and I breathed great gulps of air and felt clean and purged of all the evil of the town; for if there is vice in the country, it is to my mind evil without sordidness.

I remember my foolish thoughts were something like these, even though my reading should