O weel may the boatie row And better may she speed, And weel may the boatie row That earns the bairnies' bread!
The boatie rows, the boatie rows, The boatie rows fu' weel, And lightsome be their life that bear The merlin and the creel!
Old Ballad.
We must now introduce our reader to the interior of the fisher's cottage mentioned in chapter eleventh of this edifying history.
I wish I could say that its inside was well arranged, decently furnished, or tolerably clean.On the contrary, I am compelled to admit, there was confusion,--there was dilapidation,--there was dirt good store.Yet, with all this, there was about the inmates, Luckie Mucklebackit and her family, an appearance of ease, plenty, and comfort, that seemed to warrant their old sluttish proverb, ``The clartier the cosier.'' A huge fire, though the season was summer, occupied the hearth, and served at once for affording light, heat, and the means of preparing food.The fishing had been successful, and the family, with customary improvidence, had, since unlading the cargo, continued an unremitting operation of broiling and frying that part of the produce reserved for home consumption, and the bones and fragments lay on the wooden trenchers, mingled with morsels of broken bannocks and shattered mugs of half-drunk beer.The stout and athletic form of Maggie herself, bustling here and there among a pack of half-grown girls and younger children, of whom she chucked one now here and another now there, with an exclamation of ``Get out o' the gate, ye little sorrow!'' was strongly contrasted with the passive and half-stupified look and manner of her husband's mother, a woman advanced to the last stage of human life, who was seated in her wonted chair close by the fire, the warmth of which she coveted, yet hardly seemed to be sensible of--now muttering to herself, now smiling vacantly to the children as they pulled the strings of her _toy_ or close cap, or twitched her blue checked apron.With her distaff in her bosom, and her spindle in her hand, she plied lazily and mechanically the old-fashioned Scottish thrift, according to the old-fashioned Scottish manner.
The younger children, crawling among the feet of the elder, watched the progress of grannies spindle as it twisted, and now and then ventured to interrupt its progress as it danced upon the floor in those vagaries which the more regulated spinning-wheel has now so universally superseded, that even the fated Princess in the fairy tale might roam through all Scotland without the risk of piercing her hand with a spindle, and dying of the wound.
Late as the hour was (and it was long past midnight), the whole family were still on foot, and far from proposing to go to bed;the dame was still busy broiling car-cakes on the girdle, and the elder girl, the half-naked mermaid elsewhere commemorated, was preparing a pile of Findhorn haddocks (that is, haddocks smoked with green wood), to be eaten along with these relishing provisions.
While they were thus employed, a slight tap at the door, accompanied with the question, ``Are ye up yet, sirs?'' announced a visitor.The answer, ``Ay, ay,--come your ways ben, hinny,''
occasioned the lifting of the latch, and Jenny Rintherout, the female domestic of our Antiquary, made her appearance.
``Ay, ay,'' exclaimed the mistress of the family--``Hegh, sirs!
can this be you, Jenny?--a sight o' you's gude for sair een, lass.''
``O woman, we've been sae ta'en up wi' Captain Hector's wound up by, that I havena had my fit out ower the door this fortnight; but he's better now, and auld Caxon sleeps in his room in case he wanted onything.Sae, as soon as our auld folk gaed to bed, I e'en snodded my head up a bit, and left the house-door on the latch, in case onybody should be wanting in or out while I was awa, and just cam down the gate to see an there was ony cracks amang ye.''
``Ay, ay,'' answered Luckie Mucklebackit, ``I see you hae gotten a' your braws on; ye're looking about for Steenie now--but he's no at hame the night; and ye'll no do for Steenie, lass --a feckless thing like you's no fit to mainteen a man.''
``Steenie will no do for me,'' retorted Jenny, with a toss of her head that might have become a higher-born damsel; ``Imaun hae a man that can mainteen his wife.''
``Ou ay, hinny--thae's your landward and burrows-town notions.My certie!--fisherwives ken better--they keep the man, and keep the house, and keep the siller too, lass.''
``A wheen poor drudges ye are,'' answered the nymph of the land to the nymph of the sea.``As sune as the keel o' the coble touches the sand, deil a bit mair will the lazy fisher loons work, but the wives maun kilt their coats, and wade into the surf to tak the fish ashore.And then the man casts aff the wat and puts on the dry, and sits down wi' his pipe and his gill-stoup ahint the ingle, like ony auld houdie, and neer a turn will he do till the coble's afloat again! And the wife she maun get the scull on her back, and awa wi' the fish to the next burrows-town, and scauld and ban wi'ilka wife that will scauld and ban wi'her till it's sauld--and that's the gait fisher-wives live, puir slaving bodies.''
``Slaves?--gae wa', lass!--ca' the head o' the house slaves?
little ye ken about it, lass.Show me a word my Saunders daur speak, or a turn he daur do about the house, without it be just to tak his meat, and his drink, and his diversion, like ony o'
the weans.He has mair sense than to ca' anything about the bigging his ain, frae the rooftree down to a crackit trencher on the bink.He kens weel eneugh wha feeds him, and cleeds him, and keeps a' tight, thack and rape, when his coble is jowing awa in the Firth, puir fallow.Na, na, lass!--them that sell the goods guide the purse--them that guide the purse rule the house.
Show me ane o' yer bits o' farmer-bodies that wad let their wife drive the stock to the market, and ca' in the debts.Na, na.''
``Aweel, aweel, Maggie, ilka land has its ain lauch--But where's Steenie the night, when a's come and gane? And where's the gudeman?''<*>