Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 1Wilson, John
General
Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 1
Wilson, John
Essays
Of David, the third son, who has not heard, that has heard anything of
the pulpit eloquence of Scotland?--Should his life be spared, there can
be no doubt that he will one day or other be Moderator of the General
Assembly, perhaps Professor of Divinity in a College. Be that as it may,
a better Christian never expounded the truths of the gospel, although
some folks pretend to say that he is not evangelical. He is, however,
beloved by the poor--the orphan and the widow; and his ministrations,
powerful in the kirk to a devoutly listening congregation, are so too at
the sick-bed, when only two or three are gathered around it, and when
the dying man feels how a fellow-creature can, by scriptural aids,
strengthen his trust in the mercy of his Maker.
Every year, on the birthday of each of their sons, the old people hold a
festival--in May, in August, and at Christmas. The sailor alone looks
disconsolate as a bachelor, but that reproach will be wiped away before
autumn; and should God grant the cottagers a few more years, some new
faces will yet smile upon the holidays; and there is in their unwithered
hearts warm love enough for all that may join the party. We too--yes,
gentle reader--we too shall be there--as we have often been during the
last ten years--and you yourself will judge, from all you know of us,
whether or no we have a heart to understand and enjoy such rare
felicity.
But let us be off to the mountains, and endeavour to interest our
beloved reader in a Highland Cottage--in any one, taken at hap-hazard,
from a hundred. You have been roaming all day among the mountains, and
perhaps seen no house except at a dwindling distance. Probably you have
wished not to see any house, but a ruined shieling--a deserted hut--or
an unroofed and dilapidated shed for the outlying cattle of some remote
farm. But now the sun has inflamed all the western heaven, and darkness
will soon descend. There is now a muteness more stern and solemn than
during unfaded daylight. List--the faint, far-off, subterranean sound of
the bagpipe! Some old soldier, probably, playing a gathering or a
coronach. The narrow dell widens and widens into a great glen, in which
you just discern the blue gleam of a loch. The martial music is more
distinctly heard--loud, fitful, fierce, like the trampling of men in
battle. Where is the piper? In a cave, or within the Fairies' Knowe? At
the door of a hut. His eyes were extinguished by ophthalmia, and there
he sits, fronting the sunlight, stone-blind. Long silver hair flows down
his broad shoulders, and you perceive that, when he rises, he will rear
up a stately bulk. The music stops, and you hear the bleating of goats.
There they come, prancing down the rocks, and stare upon the stranger.
The old soldier turns himself towards the voice of the Sassenach, and,
with the bold courtesy of the camp, bids him enter the hut. One
minute's view has sufficed to imprint the scene for ever on the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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