He could not deny that, looking round upon the dreary region,
and seeing nothing but bleak fields and naked trees, hills
obscured by fogs, and flats covered with inundations, he did
for some time suffer melancholy to prevail upon him, and
wished himself again safe at home.
--'Travels of Will. Marvel,' IDLER, No. 49.
It was in the beginning of the month of November 17--when a
young English gentleman, who had just left the university of
Oxford, made use of the liberty afforded him to visit some parts
of the north of England; and curiosity extended his tour into the
adjacent frontier of the sister country. He had visited, on the
day that opens our history, some monastic ruins in the county of
Dumfries, and spent much of the day in making drawings of them
from different points, so that, on mounting his horse to resume
his journey, the brief and gloomy twilight of the season had
already commenced. His way lay through a wide tract of black moss,
extending for miles on each side and before him. Little eminences
arose like islands on its surface, bearing here and there patches
of corn, which even at this season was green, and sometimes a hut
or farm-house, shaded by a willow or two and surrounded by large
elder-bushes. These insulated dwellings communicated with each
other by winding passages through the moss, impassable by any but
the natives themselves. The public road, however, was tolerably
well made and safe, so that the prospect of being benighted
brought with it no real danger. Still it is uncomfortable to
travel alone and in the dark through an unknown country; and there
are few ordinary occasions upon which Fancy frets herself so much
as in a situation like that of Mannering.
As the light grew faint and more faint, and the morass appeared
blacker and blacker, our traveller questioned more closely each
chance passenger on his distance from the village of
Kippletringan, where he proposed to quarter for the night. His
queries were usually answered by a counter-challenge respecting
the place from whence he came. While sufficient daylight remained
to show the dress and appearance of a gentleman, these cross
interrogatories were usually put in the form of a case supposed,
as, 'Ye'll hae been at the auld abbey o' Halycross, sir? there's
mony English gentlemen gang to see that.'--Or, 'Your honour will
be come frae the house o' Pouderloupat?' But when the voice of the
querist alone was distinguishable, the response usually was,
'Where are ye coming frae at sic a time o' night as the like o'
this?'--or, 'Ye'll no be o' this country, freend?' The answers,
when obtained, were neither very reconcilable to each other nor
accurate in the information which they afforded. Kippletringan was
distant at first 'a gey bit'; then the 'gey bit' was more
accurately described as 'ablins three mile'; then the 'three mile'
diminished into 'like a mile and a bittock'; then extended
themselves into 'four mile or thereawa'; and, lastly, a female
voice, having hushed a wailing infant which the spokeswoman
carried in her arms, assured Guy Mannering, 'It was a weary lang
gate yet to Kippletringan, and unco heavy road for foot
passengers.' The poor hack upon which Mannering was mounted was
probably of opinion that it suited him as ill as the female
respondent; for he began to flag very much, answered each
application of the spur with a groan, and stumbled at every stone
(and they were not few) which lay in his road.
Mannering now grew impatient. He was occasionally betrayed into a
deceitful hope that the end of his journey was near by the
apparition of a twinkling light or two; but, as he came up, he was
disappointed to find that the gleams proceeded from some of those
farm-houses which occasionally ornamented the surface of the
extensive bog. At length, to complete his perplexity, he arrived
at a place where the road divided into two. If there had been
light to consult the relics of a finger-post which stood there, it
would have been of little avail, as, according to the good custom
of North Britain, the inscription had been defaced shortly after
its erection. Our adventurer was therefore compelled, like a
knight-errant of old, to trust to the sagacity of his horse,
which, without any demur, chose the left-hand path, and seemed to
proceed at a somewhat livelier pace than before, affording thereby
a hope that he knew he was drawing near to his quarters for the
evening. This hope, however, was not speedily accomplished, and
Mannering, whose impatience made every furlong seem three, began
to think that Kippletringan was actually retreating before him in
proportion to his advance.
It was now very cloudy, although the stars from time to time shed
a twinkling and uncertain light. Hitherto nothing had broken the
silence around him but the deep cry of the bog-blitter, or bull-
of-the-bog, a large species of bittern, and the sighs of the wind
as it passed along the dreary morass. To these was now joined the
distant roar of the ocean, towards which the traveller seemed to
be fast approaching. This was no circumstance to make his mind
easy. Many of the roads in that country lay along the sea-beach,
and were liable to be flooded by the tides, which rise with great
height, and advance with extreme rapidity. Others were intersected
with creeks and small inlets, which it was only safe to pass at
particular times of the tide. Neither circumstance would have
suited a dark night, a fatigued horse, and a traveller ignorant of
his road. Mannering resolved, therefore, definitively to halt for
the night at the first inhabited place, however poor, he might
chance to reach, unless he could procure a guide to this unlucky
village of Kippletringan.
A miserable hut gave him an opportunity to execute his purpose. He
found out the door with no small difficulty, and for some time
knocked without producing any other answer than a duet between a
female and a cur-dog, the latter yelping as if he would have
barked his heart out, the other screaming in chorus. By degrees
the human tones predominated; but the angry bark of the cur being
at the instant changed into a howl, it is probable something more
than fair strength of lungs had contributed to the ascendency.
'Sorrow be in your thrapple then!' these were the first articulate
words, 'will ye no let me hear what the man wants, wi' your
yaffing?'
'Am I far from Kippletringan, good dame?'
'Frae Kippletringan!!!' in an exalted tone of wonder, which we can
but faintly express by three points of admiration. 'Ow, man! ye
should hae hadden eassel to Kippletringan; ye maun gae back as far
as the whaap, and baud the whaap till ye come to Ballenloan, and
then--'
'This will never do, good dame! my horse is almost quite knocked
up; can you not give me a night's lodgings?'
'Troth can I no; I am a lone woman, for James he's awa to
Drumshourloch Fair with the year-aulds, and I daurna for my life
open the door to ony o' your gang-there-out sort o' bodies.'
'But what must I do then, good dame? for I can't sleep here upon
the road all night.'
'Troth, I kenna, unless ye like to gae down and speer for quarters
at the Place. I'se warrant they'll tak ye in, whether ye be gentle
or semple.'
'Simple enough, to be wandering here at such a time of night,'
thought Mannering, who was ignorant of the meaning of the phrase;
'but how shall I get to the PLACE, as you call it?'
'Ye maun baud wessel by the end o' the loan, and take tent o' the
jaw-hole.'
'O, if ye get to eassel and wessel again, I am undone! Is there
nobody that could guide me to this Place? I will pay him
handsomely.'
The word pay operated like magic. 'Jock, ye villain,' exclaimed
the voice from the interior, 'are ye lying routing there, and a
young gentleman seeking the way to the Place? Get up, ye fause
loon, and show him the way down the muckle loaning. He'll show you
the way, sir. and I'se warrant ye'll be weel put up; for they
never turn awa naebody frae the door; and ye 'll be come in the
canny moment, I'm thinking, for the laird's servant--that's no to
say his body-servant, but the helper like--rade express by this
e'en to fetch the houdie, and he just staid the drinking o' twa
pints o' tippenny to tell us how my leddy was ta'en wi' her
pains.'
'Perhaps,' said Mannering, 'at such a time a stranger's arrival
might be inconvenient?'
'Hout, na, ye needna be blate about that; their house is muckle
eneugh, and decking time's aye canty time.'
By this time Jock had found his way into all the intricacies of a
tattered doublet and more tattered pair of breeches, and sallied
forth, a great white-headed, bare-legged, lubberly boy of twelve
years old, so exhibited by the glimpse of a rush-light which his
half-naked mother held in such a manner as to get a peep at the
stranger without greatly exposing herself to view in return. Jock
moved on westward by the end of the house, leading Mannering's
horse by the bridle, and piloting with some dexterity along the
little path which bordered the formidable jaw-hole, whose vicinity
the stranger was made sensible of by means of more organs than
one. His guide then dragged the weary hack along a broken and
stony cart-track, next over a ploughed field, then broke down a
slap, as he called it, in a drystone fence, and lugged the
unresisting animal through the breach, about a rood of the simple
masonry giving way in the splutter with which he passed. Finally,
he led the way through a wicket into something which had still the
air of an avenue, though many of the trees were felled. The roar
of the ocean was now near and full, and the moon, which began to
make her appearance, gleamed on a turreted and apparently a ruined
mansion of considerable extent. Mannering fixed his eyes upon it
with a disconsolate sensation.
'Why, my little fellow,' he said, 'this is a ruin, not a house?'
'Ah, but the lairds lived there langsyne; that's Ellangowan Auld
Place. There's a hantle bogles about it; but ye needna be feared,
I never saw ony mysell, and we're just at the door o' the New
Place.'
Accordingly, leaving the ruins on the right, a few steps brought
the traveller in front of a modern house of moderate size, at
which his guide rapped with great importance. Mannering told his
circumstances to the servant; and the gentleman of the house, who
heard his tale from the parlour, stepped forward and welcomed the
stranger hospitably to Ellangowan. The boy, made happy with half-
a-crown, was dismissed to his cottage, the weary horse was
conducted to a stall, and Mannering found himself in a few minutes
seated by a comfortable supper, for which his cold ride gave him a
hearty appetite. |