The Autobiography of William Jerdan
Ch. 9: Excursion
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AN ARCHÆOLOGICAL EXCURSION. |
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CHAPTER IX.
AN ARCHÆOLOGICAL EXCURSION.
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Land of the mountain and the flood,
Land of green heath and shaggy wood,
Land of my sires, I love thee well.
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Pleasure is no doubt a pleasant thing, but it cannot last for
ever, and is often attended by considerable penalties. My opponent in the duel I have
mentioned, was in reality a fine fervid creature tingling with Indian blood; and since our
foolish quarrel, in which I had not fired, for I saw his bullet hit the ground between us,
in time; we had continued on warm friendly terms together. He was fond of play, got into
bad hands though of Scottish gentlemen, lost all his money, and committed suicide. I was
severely shocked, and having been for several months in declining health, my appearance
excited some anxiety in the breast of my ever-indulgent master, the kind-hearted Corrie Elliott, of Woollee, W.S. He indeed made our doings
now and then, a sport, as it were to lighten the drudgery of business, which he considered
it to be if we did as much in a week as an active practitioner might accomplish in a day, I
remember having finished a deed to be signed by Dame Janet
Grant of Preston Grange, Countess Dowager of Hyndford; and on my admiring
the sonorous romanticism of the name and title, the worthy old gentleman took the ![]()
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opportunity to play off a joke upon me. He expatiated on the
extraordinary beauty of the lady, and contrived that I should carry a letter from him and
breakfast with her next morning, taking the parchment with me to be signed, as an excuse.
Full of curiosity and expectation, I was timely, for a wonder, at my Lady’s residence
in a street out of the Canongate (St. John Street, I think); for the old Town still
retained a portion of the quality, and was shown into a room to await her appearance from
the toilet. At last she came, and to my utter surprise I beheld a wrinkled ancient crone,
with a beard that would, though scrupulously clean, have done honour to one of the Witches
in Macbeth. At first I could scarcely conceal my amazement, and then it was yet more
difficult to suppress my laughter, of which symptoms were doubtless visible, for after a
very agreeable meal with one of the best informed and agreeable old ladies I ever
encountered, she quietly put to me the question about my risible propensities. There was no
way out of the dilemma but the truth, and so I confessed to all her lawyer’s
instructions, at which she laughed as heartily as I had been inclined to do, and sent me
back with a billet to “Corrie” (the accepted abridgment of Cornelius),
ironically complaining of his sending his clerk to her on such a sleeveless errand.
But all these well-meant expedients failed to accomplish their object, and
I got more and more sickly; which was attributed to my reading too hard for a fancied
degree I never aimed to take. I had, however, adopted a freak to read very hard to make up
for lost time!—and really injured my constitution by the process. Consumption was
predicted, and I was a marked young man, much pitied and caressed. It was almost worth
while to think one was dying or even to die, in order to excite such sympathies, and be the
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of such affecting solicitude. I was quite reconciled to my
destiny, when an event occurred to shift it into another course. In our office there
happened to be the germ of an important plea, which was now brought to a critical position,
by an action by certain Messrs. Hunters, merchants in Edinburgh, who
claimed to be the legal proprietors of the estate of Polmood, held by Lord Forbes in right of his lady, a Miss
Hunter. The documentary evidence was perplexed and interminable, and the
genealogical complications such as would have non-plussed Mr.
Nugent Bell, and puzzled Sir Harris
Nicolas himself. It became expedient for the respondent* to trace and
ascertain how the whole race of the Hunters, and
Welshes, with whom they had intermarried, had been disposed of
from the first syllable of (Parish) recorded time. This was an opportunity not to be lost
by my thoughtful benefactor, and I was appointed to search registers and seek health
together, on a mission, for several weeks, among the hills and wild localities of the upper
districts of Peebleshire and Tweeddale. With the exception of a brief sojourn at a solitary
hostelry, where I was instructed to entertain them in capital style, and followed my
instructions to the letter, I travelled on horseback from Manse to Manse, and received
unbounded hospitalities from the ministers, whilst I examined their Kirk registers and
extracted from them every entry where the name of Hunter, or
Welsh, was to be found. Never was task more gratifying. The
bonhommie of the Priests, and the
simplicity of their parishioners, was a new world to me, whilst they, the clergy, men of
piety and learning, con-
* This appellation sounded drolly enough in a legal paper, wherein
describing his being insulted and reviled by huntsmen whom he endeavoured to stop
from trespassing on his cornfields, the farmer made oath that “to all which
torrent of abuse the Respondent answered not one word.” |
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sidered themselves as out of the world altogether. The population was
thin and scattered, the mode of living primitive in the extreme, and the visit of a
stranger, so insignificant as myself, quite enough to make a great sensation in these
secluded parts. I found the ministers ingenuous, free from all puritanism, and generally
well informed. Several of them had furnished the accounts of their parishes for the
valuable Statistical Account of
Scotland, projected and executed under the auspices of Sir John Sinclair; and since immensely improved in the
publication of Messrs. Blackwoods. A similar work would be of deep
interest to England; but I must not wander from Tweedshaws, and the mossy uplands where it
bubbles into light, whilst Clyde and Annan rise at a little distance from the Tweed and
each other; and a small circuit of earth is the mother of three beautiful rivers, which
flow in three different directions, adorning and enriching the south and west of the
kingdom, till they fall into different seas. The triplex legs, which are the arms of the
Isle of Man, might be their symbol.
The examination of the parish books was also a labour of love, and source
of endless amusement. They mostly went as far back as a century and-a-half, and were, in
the elder times, filled with such entries as bespoke a very strange condition of society.
The inquisitorial practices and punitive powers of the Ministry could not be exceeded in
countries most enslaved by the priesthood of the Church of Rome. Forced confessions, the
denial of religious rites even on the bed of death, excommunication, shameful exposures,
and a rigid and minute interference in every domestic or private concern, indicated a state
of things which must have been intolerable. High and low were obliged to submit to this
offensive discipline and domination. The Laird, like ![]()
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the hind, had to
mount the cutty-stool in atonement for his amatory transgressions, and back-sliders of
inferior station were visited still more severely for their moral lapses and “heinous
sins.” One of the striking features throughout was the evident avidity with which
cases of indecent character were hunted out, and every detail investigated, as if the
Reverend Inquisitor, whether Minister or Elder, gloated on the obscene revelations which
they insisted on being made. Many of these were as filthy, above a hundred years ago, as
some of the trials reported in our newspapers are at the present day.
My duty was thus pleasantly and satisfactorily performed. My note-book was
full. My skill in decyphering obsolete manuscript was cultivated and improved; and my
health was restored as if by miracle. Of other incidents and results I shall only state
that on one occasion, to rival Bruce in Abyssinia, I
dined off mutton whilst the sheep nibbled the grass upon the lawn,—our fare being the
amputated tails of the animals, which made a very dainty dish;—that on reaching Edinburgh,
my hackney, having from a dark gallop over a ground where a murder had been committed not
long before, and being put into a cold stable, lost every hair on its hide like a scalded
pig, subjected me to half his price in lieu of damage;—and that the famous and ancient
Polmood remained in the possession of Lord Forbes, as
inherited from the charter of King Robert, who gave the
lands for ever, “as high up as heaven and as low down as hell,” to the
individual named in the grant which was witnessed “by Meg, my
wife, and Marjory, my nourice.”
This was nearly my last exploit in Edinburgh. A delightful excursion over
Fife, and visit to Balcarres Castle, the seat of the noble and lively
Lindsays, finished my Scottish sojourn. I bade farewell to many
dear friends ![]()
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and companions, and again taking leave of my native home,
sought the busy mart of London without a fixed plan, and only vague notions and wishes
floating in lay imagination, among which the pursuit of a literary life was the most
prominent and the least understood. Like a child I could only see the gilt edges and gay
binding of the book, and little apprehended the toil of the text, the labour of the brain,
and all the troubles and ills that were concealed within!
Henry Nugent Bell (1792-1822)
Of the Inner Temple, Irish-born genealogist and legal antiquary.
James Bruce of Kinnaird (1730-1794)
Scottish traveler in Africa; he was the author of
Travels to Discover
the Source of the Nile, 5 vols (1790).
Cornelius Elliot of Woollee (1733-1821)
Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh; in 1765 he married Margaret Rannie (d. 1796). The
journalist William Jerdan studied law with him.
Sir James Ochoncar Forbes, eighteenth lord Forbes (1765-1843)
Lieutenant-general during the Napoleonic Wars; in 1792 he married Elizabeth Hunter of
Polmood, and succeeded his father 1804. He was a Scottish representative peer who voted
with the Tories.
Janet Grant, countess of Hyndford (d. 1818)
The eldest daughter of William Grant, Lord Advocate of Scotland; in 1749 she married John
Carmichael, fourth earl of Hyndford (1710-87).
Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas (1799-1848)
English antiquary and editor; he contributed extensively to the
Gentleman's Magazine and co-edited the
Retrospective
Review with Henry Southern.
Sir John Sinclair, first baronet (1754-1835)
Scottish MP, projected the
Statistical Account of Scotland
(1791-1799) and superintended an edition of Ossian (1807).
