Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 11
General
Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 11
Scottish Borders (Scotland) -- Fiction
On arriving at Glasgow, which, although a distance of nearly forty
miles from the spot where we first introduced them to the reader, they
made out with perfect ease on the evening of the same day on which
they left their native village, the young men repaired to a well-known
resort of the privates of Highland regiments which were from time to
time quartered in Glasgow. This was a low, dark public-house in the
High Street of that city, kept by a Serjeant M'Nab, an old veteran,
who had seen service in his day; and who, although he had now retired
into private life, continued to maintain all his military connections
with as much zeal as if he was still in the discharge of his military
duties; and, indeed, this he was to some extent, having still an
authority to enlist. The house of M'Nab was thus filled from morning
to night with soldiers of various grades of rank--serjeants,
corporals, and privates--and of various degrees of standing, from the
raw, newly-enrolled recruit, with his stiff black stock--the only
article of his military equipment with which he had been yet
provided--to the veteran serjeant, who had literally fought his way to
his present rank. In every corner of every room in this favourite
resort of the Celtic warriors, lay heaps of muskets resting against
the wall; and on every table lay piles of Highland bonnets--their
owners being engaged in discussing the contents of the oft-replenished
_half-mutchkin stoup_. Occasionally, too, the scream of a bagpipe
might be suddenly heard in some apartment, where the party by which it
was occupied had attained the point of musical excitement, while, over
all, except the sounds of the aforenamed instrument, prevailed the din
of noisy, but good-humoured colloquy, in sonorous Gaelic; for no other
language was ever heard in the warlike domicile of Serjeant M'Nab.
Such, then, was the house--further distinguished, we forgot to say, by
the sign of the Ram's Head--to which James M'Intyre and Roderick
M'Leod now repaired. They were met at the door by M'Nab, then in the
act of bidding good-by to a batch of serjeants, who, adjusting their
bonnets as they stepped, one after the other, from beneath the low
doorway of the Ram's Head, were about to form a recruiting party to
beat up through the streets for young aspirants after military
glory--a single drummer and fifer being in attendance for this
purpose.
"Ah, Shames! Ou Rory!" exclaimed M'Nab, taking each of the young men,
who were both well known to him (he being from the same part of the
country), by the hand; "what has brought you" (we translate, for this
was spoken in Gaelic) "to this quarter of the world?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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