Friend Mac Donald

CHAPTER XVII

Donald is not easily knocked down. – He calmly contemplates Death, especially other People's. – A thoughtful Wife. – A very natural Request. – A Consolable Father. – "Job," 1st Chapter, 21st Verse. – Merry Funerals. – They manage Things better in Ireland. – Gone just in Time. – Touching Funeral Orations.

If folks do not laugh much at a wedding in Scotland, they make up for it at a funeral.

Let me hasten to say, that I am sure it would be insulting the reader's intelligence to tell him that this applies only to the lower classes.

As a good Christian and a man who has led a busy and useful life, Donald calmly contemplates the approach of death – especially other people's.

Death is always near, he says to himself, and a wise man should not be alarmed at its approach.

Thus fortified with wisdom, he calmly looks the evil in the face, and lets it not disturb his little jog-trot existence. This does not imply that he is wanting in affection, it only means that he accepts the inevitable without murmuring, and that in him reason has the mastery over sentiment.

A guid wife would say to her husband in the most natural way in the world:

"Donald, I do not think you have long to live. Have you any special request to make me? Whom would you like invited to your funeral? Do you wish Jamie to be chief mourner?" and so on.

An Edinburgh lady told me that her housemaid one morning came and asked her for leave of absence until six in the evening, saying that her sister was to be buried that day.

The permission was granted, of course.

The Scotch know how to keep their word. At six o'clock precisely the maid returned, but wanted to know whether she might have the evening free as well.

"What do you want the evening for?" asked her mistress.

"Oh! ma'am," replied the lassie, "the rest of the family want to finish the day at the theatre, and they asked me to go with them."

Impossible to refuse so natural a request.

This trait of the Scotch character is often to be met with in the superior classes also.

Here is a very striking example of it.

One of my friends, an eminent professor at one of the great English public schools, had taken to Braemar with him a young Scotchman of great promise whom he wished not to lose sight of during the long summer vacation.

The mornings and evenings were devoted to study. The hot afternoons were spent with Horace and Euripides, on the bank of the Dee, in the shade of the trees that crowd down to the water's brink, as if they were all eager to gaze at their own reflection in the river.

During the dry season the stream is fordable in several places, and many times had the young Scotchman crossed it.

Wishing to pass a week with his family before school reopened, the pupil had told his professor that he wished to leave Braemar before him.

The day before that which he had fixed for his departure, a fearful storm had burst over the neighbourhood.

Arrived with his knapsack on his back at the banks of the Dee, he saw before him, not a peaceful stream, but an angry torrent, swollen and lashed to fury by the storm.

The young Scotchman was not to be intimidated. He had crossed many times, and he would do it again. Besides, the only other way of getting to the station was by going two or three miles further down and taking the boat. He prepared to ford the stream.

Next day the poor young fellow's corpse, bruised and mangled, was found a mile down the river.

It would be beyond my powers to describe the despair of the professor, when he heard of the terrible catastrophe. Entrusted with the care of the young man, he felt as if guilty of his death. What could he say to the unhappy parents?

A telegram was despatched to the father, who arrived the day after. My friend went to meet him at the station. What was his relief when he heard this father say to him: "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord."

And he added:

"This sublime passage is from Job, first chapter and twenty-second verse – let me see, is it the twenty-first or the twenty-second verse? It is the twenty-first, I am pretty sure."

"I fear I cannot say," replied my friend.

They walked, discussing the Book of Job the while, to the house where lay the remains of the unfortunate youth.

Do not suppose that the Scotchman ran to imprint a farewell kiss on the brow of his dead son. He seized upon a Bible that lay on the drawing-room table, turned to the Book of Job, and having found the passage he had quoted, said with a triumphant look at the professor:

"It is the twenty-first verse – I knew I was right."

In days gone by, Scotch funerals were made the occasions of visiting and great drinking. During the week that preceded the actual burying, open house was kept for the relatives and friends of the corpse,3 and prodigious quantities of whisky were consumed. These scenes took place among the aristocracy and the gentry as well as among the lower classes, and they culminated in a general drinking bout on the day of the interment.

The route of the funeral procession might be traced by the victims of Scotch hospitality to be seen lying helplessly inebriated by the wayside, and only a small remnant of it reached the graveyard. More than once was the coffin, which was carried by hand, left by the hedge, and the burial put off until the morrow. After several stages the defunct reached his long home.4

To-day such scenes would excite as much disgust in Scotland as anywhere else. Scotch manners and customs have greatly toned down.

In the lower classes, however, the burial of a relative is still an occasion for Bacchanalian festivities, and the day is finished up, as we have seen, at the theatre or other place of entertainment, where a pleasant evening can be spent.

But what is this in comparison with that which still goes on in Ireland in our day? That is where the thing is brought to perfection.

As I fear I might be taxed with imposture, if I attempted to give a description of the Irish wake, I will pass the pen to an English journalist.

A woman having died suddenly at Waterford, the Coroner had, according to law, ordered an inquest. Here is the deposition of the police constable; I extract it from my newspaper (May 8th, 1887):

"When I entered the house last night, I found all the family in the room where the coffin was. They were all drunk. The deceased had been raised to a sitting posture in the coffin, and, by means of cords attached to her hands and feet, was being made to execute all kinds of marionette performances. It was like a Punch and Judy show, at which the corpse played the part of Punch. One of the sons was seated near the coffin playing a concertina. When they saw me enter, the young men quarrelled over the body, and danced around madly to the sound of the instrument. I had the greatest difficulty to get possession of the corpse for the inquest."

One would think one was reading a description of some scene of life in an out-of-the-way island of Oceania, instead of the sister-isle of civilised England.

One more anecdote to show that Donald views the approach of dissolution in his neighbour, without alarm.

An old Scotchman, feeling death at hand, had bidden all his family to his bedside.

"I have sent for you," he said to them, "in order to give you my last commands. I leave my house and all that belongs to it to my son Donald, as well as all my cattle."

"Puir old father, he keeps his faculties to the last," said Donald to his neighbour.

"As for my personal property, I desire that it may be divided equally between…"

Here the old man's voice failed. He made a last effort to speak. His children bent down to catch his words.

He was dead.

"Puir father," cried Donald, "he is gone just as he was beginning to rave."

Here is a touching funeral oration.

Donald had just had the misfortune to lose on the same day his wife and his cow.

"Oh, my poor Janet," he lamented, "why have ye left me? Wha 'll gie me back my Janet?"

"Nonsense! you will soon get over it," said a friend, "times cures every ill. You'll marry again by-and-by."

"It may be, I dinna say no; but wha 'll gie me back my Janet?"

Janet, as the reader may have divined, was the name of the "coo."

CHAPTER XVIII

Intellectual Life in Scotland. – The Climate is not so bad as it is represented to be. – Comparisons. – Literary and Scientific Societies. – Why should not France possess such Societies? – Scotch Newspapers. – Scotland is the Sinew of the British Empire.

How active and intellectual life in Scotland seems, in comparison with the petty and monotonous existence led by the dwellers in Provincial France!

Is it the climate that so stirs the Scotch up to action? Possibly it may be, up to a certain point: in a cold damp climate, a man feels it imperative to keep his brain and body stirring; however, it is not fair to abuse that poor Scotch climate too much. I saw roses blooming on the walls of a house I visited at in Helensburgh last January, and I culled primroses in the open air in February, at Buckie on the north coast of Scotland.

Scotch intellectual activity is the result of a widespread education which is within the reach of the poorest.

Enter the lowliest cottage and you will find books there – the Bible, books on agriculture, a novel or two, and almost invariably the poems of their dear Burns.

There is no little town of three or four thousand inhabitants but has its Literary and Scientific Society.

In some cases, a rich philanthropist has come forward with a sum of money to build a suitable home for the Society, but very often no such building exists, and the meetings are held in the Town Hall, or some other public edifice of the place.

Scotchwomen are excellent housewives. In their leisure time they draw, write, and make themselves acquainted with the social, religious, and political, questions of the day.

They organise societies for the help of the poor, or get up concerts in aid of the unfortunate. On Sundays, they teach the Bible to the children of the poor. The old maids hunt out cases of distress and make themselves useful to the community: they do the house-to-house visitation.

At any rate it is living.

Compare this existence with life as led in Provincial France, where people are wrapped up in their own family circle, take to keeping birds, and divide their spare time between saying their pater nosters and criticising their neighbours.

In Paris there is too much life, and in the provinces too little. All the blood goes to the head, and the body droops and is paralysed. It is the initiative spirit that is wanting; for, thank Heaven, it is neither the brain nor the money that lacks.

I spoke of Buckie at the commencement of this chapter. You have probably never heard of Buckie, dear Reader. I assure you that a few months ago I was in the same state of ignorance. My lecturing manager had marked this little town on my list. I was invited to lecture at Buckie, it appeared.

This little hive of three or four thousand bees looked to me, as I alighted from the train, like a most insignificant little place.

The chief doctor of the town, having written to offer me hospitality for the night, had come to the station to meet me.

"Do you mean to say you have a Literary Society here?" I said to him.

"I should think so indeed," he replied; "and a very flourishing one it is."

"It is a manufacturing town, I suppose?"

"Well, no; we have here a few well-to-do families. The rest of the town consists of farmers, shopkeepers, and fisherfolk."

"I hope the lecture-room is a small one," I remarked.

"Make yourself easy about that," he replied; "our room holds from seven to eight hundred people, but I guarantee it will be full to-night. They will all want to come and hear what the Frenchman has got to say."

I pretended to feel reassured, but I was far from being so.

His prediction was verified after all, and never did I have a more intelligent and appreciative audience.

Surely Lyons, Marseilles, Lille, Nantes, Nancy, Bordeaux, ought to be able to do what can be done by Buckie!

I doubt whether the Scotch are more intelligent than the English (I mean the masses), but they are still more energetic and persevering, much more frugal and economical, and certainly more intellectual; that is to say, that the pleasures they seek after are of a higher order.

The Scotch are great readers.

In their public libraries, I have seen hundreds of workmen and labourers thronged around the tables, and absorbed in reading the newspapers.

The Scotch papers, such as the Scotsman, the Glasgow Herald, the Glasgow News, the British Mail, are in no wise behind the London papers in importance or in literary merit. They have their own correspondents in all the capitals of the world, and get the news of the day at first hand.

Comic papers are remarkable by their absence. The Scot does not throw away his time and money on such trifles.

On the other hand, religious papers swarm and make their fortune.

The famous Edinburgh Review has perhaps no longer quite the reputation it used to enjoy, but it is still one of the most important Reviews of Great Britain.

Yes, in all truth, Scotland is an energetic, robust, and intelligent, nation.

It is the sinew of the British Empire.

CHAPTER XIX

Higher Education in Scotland. – The Universities. – How they differ from English Universities. – Is he a Gentleman? – Scholarships. – A Visit to the University of Aberdeen. – English Prejudice against Scotch Universities.

Scotland boasts four universities: Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, and St. Andrew's.

These four great centres of learning constitute the system of Higher Education in Scotland.

These universities differ essentially from the two great English ones, first because men go there to work, secondly because they are open to the people. A peasant's son, like Thomas Carlyle for instance, can go there without fearing that his fellow-students will avoid him because he comes of a poor family.

When a new student arrives at Oxford or Cambridge, the others do not enquire whether he is a clever fellow or a dunce; what they want to know is what his father is, and who was his grandfather. It is only after obtaining a satisfactory answer to these questions that they associate with the new comer.

In Scotland, as in France, every man who is well educated and has the manners of good society is a gentleman. The son of a peasant possessing these is received everywhere.

Each Scotch university offers from fifty to eighty scholarships, varying in value from £8 to £70. These sums, paid annually to the winners of the scholarships, help them to live while they are devoting their time to study.

The most admirable thing about high education in Scotland is that it is put within the reach of all, and is not, as it is in England, a sugarplum held so high as to be often unattainable.

The result is that every intelligent young Scotchman may aim at entering a profession. There may be in this a little danger to the commerce and agriculture of the country. However, these young men do not encumber Scotland; their studies fit them for a lucrative career, which they often go and seek in the Colonies. An Australian friend told me recently that more than half the doctors in Victoria were Scotchmen.

I have spoken, in a previous chapter, of the privations that Scotch undergraduates will often impose upon themselves. Nothing is more remarkable than the sustained application and indefatigable will which they bring to bear on their studies. Nothing distracts them from their aim; they never lose sight of the diploma that will be their bread-winner. I have seen them at work, these Scotch students. I visited the School of Medicine at Aberdeen University, in the company of Dr. John Struthers, the learned Professor of Anatomy. I was struck, in passing through the dissecting room, to see about fifty students, without any professor, so absorbed in their work that not one of them lifted his head as we passed.

In France it would have been very different: every eye would have been turned to the stranger, and all through the room there would have been a whisper of Qui ça? And then remarks and jokes would have run rife.

The English are very prejudiced against the Scotch universities.

How many times have I been told in England that young fellows, who fail to obtain their medical diploma in England, could get them easily enough in Scotland. Nothing is more absurd; if ever it was so, it was a long while ago. In these days, the examinations of the four Scotch faculties are quite as severe and quite as difficult as the English ones.

Whenever there is a vacant mastership in an English public school advertised in the newspapers, it is always stated that the candidates for the post must be graduates of one of the universities of the United Kingdom. This does not alter the fact that candidates, who are not Oxford or Cambridge men, have no chance of being elected. I have known Scotch masters in the public schools. They had studied at Edinburgh, Glasgow, or Aberdeen, but had gone to Oxford or Cambridge to reside, in order to obtain an English degree.

Why is this?

Simply because these two great English universities give their old scholars an importance, not necessarily literary or scientific, but social; they stamp them gentlemen.

Whatever the English may say, the universities of old Scotland are the nurseries of learned and useful citizens. Of this they would soon be convinced if they would visit those great centres of intellectual activity. But this is just what they avoid doing. When the English go to Scotland, it is to fish or to shoot in the Highlands, and whatever they may get in the way of game or fish, they do not pick up much serious information on the subject of Scotland.

CHAPTER XX

Scotch Literature. – Robert Burns. – Walter Scott. – Thomas Carlyle and Adam Smith. – Burns Worship. – Scotch Ballads and Poetry.

Scotland possesses a national literature of which the greatest nations might justly be proud.

To take only the great names, it may safely be said that more touching and sublime poetry than that of Burns was never written, that Walter Scott was the greatest novelist of the century, that Thomas Carlyle has never been surpassed as a historian and essayist, and that Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations can be considered as the basis of modern political economy.