Friend Mac Donald Part 18

"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 la.s.sie, "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 cla.s.ses 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.

Wis.h.i.+ng to pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 pa.s.sage 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_,[C] and prodigious quant.i.ties of whisky were consumed. These scenes took place among the aristocracy and the gentry as well as among the lower cla.s.ses, and they culminated in a general drinking bout on the day of the interment.

[C] It was thus that the defunct was referred to until after the funeral was over.

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.[D]

[D] Dean Ramsay relates that in Inverness, forty years ago, the coffin of a certain laird only reached the cemetery at the end of a fortnight.

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 cla.s.ses, however, the burial of a relative is still an occasion for Baccha.n.a.lian 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 pa.s.s 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.