Auld Licht Idyls | Page 4

leading to houses until after they were finished. Narrow paths
straggling round gardens, some of them with stunted gates, which it is
commoner to step over than, to open, have been formed to reach these
dwellings, but in winter they are running streams, and then the best way

to reach a house such as that of Tammy Mealmaker the wright,
pronounced wir-icht, is over a broken dyke and a pig-sty. Tammy, who
died a bachelor, had been soured in his youth by a disappointment in
love, of which he spoke but seldom. She lived far away in a town
which he had wandered in the days when his blood ran hot, and they
became engaged. Unfortunately, however, Tammy forgot her name,
and he never knew the address; so there the affair ended, to his silent
grief. He admitted himself, over his snuff-mull of an evening, that he
was a very ordinary character, but a certain halo of horror was cast over
the whole family by their connection with little Joey Sutie, who was
pointed at in Thrums as the laddie that whistled when he went past the
minister. Joey became a pedler, and was found dead one raw morning
dangling over a high wall within a few miles of Thrums. When
climbing the dyke his pack had slipped back, the strap round his neck,
and choked him.
You could generally tell an Auld Licht in Thrums when you passed him,
his dull, vacant face wrinkled over a heavy wob. He wore tags of yarn
round his trousers beneath the knee, that looked like ostentatious
garters, and frequently his jacket of corduroy was put on beneath his
waistcoat. If he was too old to carry his load on his back, he wheeled it
on a creaking barrow, and when he met a friend they said, "Ay,
Jeames," and "Ay, Davit," and then could think of nothing else. At long
intervals they passed through the square, disappearing or coming into
sight round the town-house which stands on the south side of it, and
guards the entrance to a steep brae that leads down and then twists up
on its lonely way to the county town. I like to linger over the square,
for it was from an upper window in it that I got to know Thrums. On
Saturday nights, when the Auld Licht young men came into the square
dressed and washed to look at the young women errand-going, and to
laugh some time afterward to each other, it presented a glare of light;
and here even came the cheap jacks and the Fair Circassian, and the
showman, who, besides playing "The Mountain Maid and the
Shepherd's Bride," exhibited part of the tall of Balaam's ass, the helm
of Noah's ark, and the tartan plaid in which Flora McDonald wrapped
Prince Charlie. More select entertainment, such as Shuffle Kitty's
wax-work, whose motto was, "A rag to pay, and in you go," were given

in a hall whose approach was by an outside stair. On the Muckle Friday,
the fair for which children storing their pocket-money would
accumulate sevenpence halfpenny in less than six months, the square
was crammed with gingerbread stalls, bag-pipers, fiddlers, and
monstrosities who were gifted with second-sight. There was a bearded
man, who had neither legs nor arms, and was drawn through the streets
in a small cart by four dogs. By looking at you he could see all the
clock-work inside, as could a boy who was led about by his mother at
the end of a string. Every Friday there was the market, when a dozen
ramshackle carts containing vegetables and cheap crockery filled the
centre of the square, resting in line on their shafts. A score of farmers'
wives or daughters in old-world garments squatted against the
town-house within walls of butter on cabbage-leaves, eggs and
chickens. Toward evening the voice of the buckie-man shook the
square, and rival fish-cadgers, terrible characters who ran races on
horseback, screamed libels at each other over a fruiterer's barrow. Then
it was time for douce Auld Lichts to go home, draw their stools near
the fire, spread their red handkerchiefs over their legs to prevent their
trousers getting singed, and read their "Pilgrim's Progress."
In my school-house, however, I seem to see the square most readily in
the Scotch mist which so often filled it, loosening the stones and
choking the drains. There was then no rattle of rain against my
window-sill, nor dancing of diamond drops on the roofs, but blobs of
water grew on the panes of glass to reel heavily down them. Then the
sodden square would have shed abundant tears if you could have taken
it in your hands and wrung it like a dripping cloth. At such a time the
square would be empty but