The Collected Novels. Anna Buchan
his bunnet, and he bides in a coal ree.'"
Elizabeth turned to see if her father appreciated the tale, but Mr. Seton had got the little old ballad book and was standing in his favourite attitude with one foot on a chair, lost to everything but the words he was reading.
"Now," he said, "this is an example of what I mean by Scots practicalness. It's 'Annan Water'—you know it, Jamieson? The last verse is this:
'O wae betide thee, Annan Water,
I vow thou art a drumly river;
But over thee I'll build a brig,
That thou true love no more may sever.'
You see? The last thought is not the tragedy of love and death, but of the necessity of preventing it happen again. He will build a brig."
He sat down, with the book still in his hand, smiling to himself at the vagaries of the Scots character.
"We're a strange mixture," he said, "a mixture of hard-headedness and romance, common sense and sentiment, practicality and poetry, business and idealism. Sir Walter knew that, so he made the Gifted Gilfillan turn from discoursing of the New Jerusalem of the Saints to the price of beasts at Mauchline Fair."
Mr. Jamieson leaned forward, his face alight with interest.
"And I doubt, Mr. Seton, the romantic side is strongest. Look at our history! Look at the wars we fought under Bruce and Wallace! If we had had any common sense, we would have made peace at the beginning, accepted the English terms, and grown prosperous at the expense of our rich neighbours."
"And look," said Stewart Stevenson, "at our wars of religion. I wonder what other people would have taken to the hills for a refinement of dogma. And the Jacobite risings? What earthly sense was in them? Merely because Prince Charlie was a Stuart, and because he was a gallant young fairy tale prince, we find sober, middle-aged men risking their lives and their fortunes to help a cause that was doomed from the start."
"I'm glad to think," said Mr. Seton, "that with all our prudence our history is a record of lost causes and impossible loyalties."
"I know why it is," said Elizabeth. "We have all of us, we Scots, a queer daftness in our blood. We pretend to be dour and cautious, but the fact is that at heart we are the most emotional and sentimental people on earth."
"I believe you're right," said Stewart Stevenson. "The ordinary emotional races like the Italians and the French are emotional chiefly on the surface; underneath they are a mercantile, hard-headed breed. Now we——"
"We're the other way round," said Elizabeth.
"You can see that when you think what type of man we chiefly admire," said Mr. Jamieson; "you might think it would be John Knox——"
"No, no," cried Elizabeth; "I know Father has hankerings after him, but I would quake to meet him in the flesh."
"Sir Walter Scott," suggested Mr. Stevenson.
"Personally I would vote for Sir Walter," said Mr. Seton.
"Ah, but, Mr. Seton," said John Jamieson, "I think you'll admit that if we polled the country we couldn't get a verdict for Sir Walter. I think it would be for Robert Burns. Burns is the man whose words are most often in our memories. It is Burns we think of with sympathy and affection, and why? I suppose because of his humanity; because of his rich humour and riotous imagination; because of his daftness, in a word——"
"It is odd," said Elizabeth; "for by rights, as Thomas would say, we should admire someone quite different. The Wealth of Nations man, perhaps."
"Adam Smith," said Stewart Stevenson.
"You see," said Mr. Seton, "the moral is that he who would lead Scotland must do it not only by convincing the intellect, but above all by firing the imagination and touching the heart. Yes, I can think of a good illustration. In the year 1388, or thereabouts, Douglas went raiding into Northumberland and met the Percy at Otterbourne. We possess both an English and a Scottish account of the battle. The English ballad is called 'Chevy Chase.' It tells very vigorously and graphically how the great fight was fought, but it is only a piece of rhymed history. Our ballad of 'Otterbourne' is quite different. It is full of wonderful touches of poetry, such as the Douglas's last speech:
'My wound is deep I fain would sleep:
Take thou the vanguard of the three;
And hide me by the bracken bush
That grows on yonder lilye lee.
O bury me by the bracken bush,
Beneath the blooming briar;
Let never living mortal ken
That ere a kindly Scot lies here!'"
James Seton got up and walked up and down the room, as his custom was when moved; then he anchored before the fire, and continued:
"The two ballads represent two different temperaments. You can't get over it by saying that the Scots minstrel was a poet and the English minstrel a commonplace fellow. The minstrels knew their audience and wrote what their audience wanted. The English wanted straightforward facts; the Scottish audience wanted the glamour of poetry."
"Father," said Elizabeth suddenly, "I believe that's a bit of the lecture on Ballads you're writing for the Literary Society."
Mr. Seton confessed that it was.
"I thought you sounded like a book," said his daughter.
Stewart Stevenson asked the date of the lecture and if outsiders were admitted, whereupon Elizabeth felt constrained to ask him to dine and go with them, an invitation that was readily accepted.
Teas was brought in, and John Jamieson was persuaded by Elizabeth to tell stories of his "bairns"; and then Mr. Stevenson described a walking-tour he had taken in Skye in the autumn, which enchanted the old man. At last he rose to go, remembering that it was Saturday evening and that the Minister must want to go to his sermon. When he shook hands with the young man he smiled at him somewhat wistfully.
"It's fine to be young," he said. "I was young once myself. It was never my lot to go far afield, but I mind one Fair Holiday I went with a friend to Inverary. To save the fare we out-ran the coach from Lochgoilhead to St. Catherine's—I was soople then—and on the morning we were leaving—the boat left at ten—my friend woke me at two in the morning, and we walked seventeen miles to see the sun rise on Ben Cruachan. We startled the beasts of the forest in Inveraray wood, and I mind as if it were yesterday how the rising sun smote with living fire a white cloud floating on the top of the mountain. My friend caught me by the arm as we watched the moving mist lift. 'Look,' he cried, 'the mountains do smoke!'"
He stopped and reached for his sticks. "Well! it's fine to be young, but it's not so bad to be old as you young folks think."
Elizabeth went with him to the door, and Stewart Stevenson remarked to his host on the wonderful vitality and cheerfulness of the old man.
"Yes," said Mr. Seton, "you would hardly think that he rarely knows what it is to be free of pain. Forty years ago he met with a terrible accident in the works where he was employed. It meant the end of everything to him, but he gathered up the broken bits of his life and made of it—ah, well! A great cloud of witnesses will testify one day to that. He lives beside the church, not a very savoury district as you know—but that little two-roomed house of his shines in the squalor like a good deed in a naughty world. Elizabeth calls him 'the Corregidor.' You remember?
'If any beat a horse, you felt he saw:
If any cursed a woman, he took note
... Not so much a spy
As a recording Chief-inquisitor.'
And with children he's a regular Pied Piper."
Elizabeth came into the room and heard the last words.
"Is Father telling you about Mr. Jamieson? He's one of the people who'll be very 'far ben' in the next world; but when you know my father better, Mr. Stevenson, you will find that when