Waverley; or, 'Tis sixty years since — CompleteScott, Walter
History
Waverley; or, 'Tis sixty years since — Complete
Scott, Walter
Historical fiction; Jacobite Rebellion, 1745-1746 -- Fiction; Scotland -- History -- 18th century -- Fiction
'Friend,' said Gilfillan, with a more complacent voice than he had
hitherto used, 'honour not me. I do not go out to park-dikes and to
steadings and to market-towns to have herds and cottars and burghers
pull off their bonnets to me as they do to Major Melville o'
Cairnvreckan, and ca' me laird or captain or honour. No; my sma' means,
whilk are not aboon twenty thousand merk, have had the blessing of
increase, but the pride of my heart has not increased with them; nor do
I delight to be called captain, though I have the subscribed commission
of that gospel-searching nobleman, the Earl of Glencairn, fa whilk I am
so designated. While I live I am and will be called Habakkuk Gilfillan,
who will stand up for the standards of doctrine agreed on by the ance
famous Kirk of Scotland, before she trafficked with the accursed Achan,
while he has a plack in his purse or a drap o' bluid in his body.'
'Ah,' said the pedlar, 'I have seen your land about Mauchlin. A fertile
spot! your lines have fallen in pleasant places! And siccan a breed o'
cattle is not in ony laird's land in Scotland.'
'Ye say right,--ye say right, friend' retorted Gilfillan eagerly, for
he was not inaccessible to flattery upon this subject,--'ye say right;
they are the real Lancashire, and there's no the like o' them even at
the mains of Kilmaurs'; and he then entered into a discussion of their
excellences, to which our readers will probably be as indifferent as
our hero. After this excursion the leader returned to his theological
discussions, while the pedlar, less profound upon those mystic points,
contented himself with groaning and expressing his edification at
suitable intervals.
'What a blessing it would be to the puir blinded popish nations among
whom I hae sojourned, to have siccan a light to their paths! I hae been
as far as Muscovia in my sma' trading way, as a travelling merchant,
and I hae been through France, and the Low Countries, and a' Poland,
and maist feck o' Germany, and O! it would grieve your honour's soul to
see the murmuring and the singing and massing that's in the kirk, and
the piping that's in the quire, and the heathenish dancing and dicing
upon the Sabbath!'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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