The Black Dwarf | Page 5

my
Landlord was chiefly moved to waive in my behalf the usual
requisition of a symbol, or reckoning, from the pleasure he was wont to
take in my conversation, which, though solid and edifying in the main,
was, like a well-built palace, decorated with facetious narratives and
devices, tending much to the enhancement and ornament thereof. And
so pleased was my Landlord of the Wallace in his replies during such
colloquies, that there was no district in Scotland, yea, and no peculiar,
and, as it were, distinctive custom therein practised, but was discussed
betwixt us; insomuch, that those who stood by were wont to say, it was
worth a bottle of ale to hear us communicate with each other. And not a
few travellers, from distant parts, as well as from the remote districts of
our kingdom, were wont to mingle in the conversation, and to tell news
that had been gathered in foreign lands, or preserved from oblivion in
this our own.

Now I chanced to have contracted for teaching the lower classes with a
young person called Peter, or Patrick, Pattieson, who had been educated
for our Holy Kirk, yea, had, by the license of presbytery, his voice
opened therein as a preacher, who delighted in the collection of olden
tales and legends, and in garnishing them with the flowers of poesy,
whereof he was a vain and frivolous professor. For he followed not the
example of those strong poets whom I preposed to him as a pattern, but
formed versification of a flimsy and modern texture, to the
compounding whereof was necessary small pains and less thought. And
hence I have chid him as being one of those who bring forward the fatal
revolution prophesied by Mr. Robert Carey, in his Vaticination on the
Death of the celebrated Dr. John Donne:
Now thou art gone, and thy strict laws will be Too hard for libertines in
poetry; Till verse (by thee refined) in this last age Turn ballad rhyme.
I had also disputations with him touching his indulging rather a flowing
and redundant than a concise and stately diction in his prose
exercitations. But notwithstanding these symptoms of inferior taste, and
a humour of contradicting his betters upon passages of dubious
construction in Latin authors, I did grievously lament when Peter
Pattieson was removed from me by death, even as if he had been the
offspring of my own loins. And in respect his papers had been left in
my care (to answer funeral and death-bed expenses), I conceived
myself entitled to dispose of one parcel thereof, entitled, "Tales of my
Landlord," to one cunning in the trade (as it is called) of bookselling.
He was a mirthful man, of small stature, cunning in counterfeiting of
voices, and in making facetious tales and responses, and whom I have
to laud for the truth of his dealings towards me.
Now, therefore, the world may see the injustice that charges me with
incapacity to write these narratives, seeing, that though I have proved
that I could have written them if I would, yet, not having done so, the
censure will deservedly fall, if at all due, upon the memory of Mr. Peter
Pattieson; whereas I must be justly entitled to the praise, when any is
due, seeing that, as the Dean of St. Patrick's wittily and logically
expresseth it,

That without which a thing is not, Is CAUSA SINE QUA NON.
The work, therefore, is unto me as a child is to a parent; in the which
child, if it proveth worthy, the parent hath honour and praise; but, if
otherwise, the disgrace will deservedly attach to itself alone.
I have only further to intimate, that Mr. Peter Pattieson, in arranging
these Tales for the press, hath more consulted his own fancy than the
accuracy of the narrative; nay, that he hath sometimes blended two or
three stories together for the mere grace of his plots. Of which infidelity,
although I disapprove and enter my testimony against it, yet I have not
taken upon me to correct the same, in respect it was the will of the
deceased, that his manuscript should be submitted to the press without
diminution or alteration. A fanciful nicety it was on the part of my
deceased friend, who, if thinking wisely, ought rather to have conjured
me, by all the tender ties of our friendship and common pursuits, to
have carefully revised, altered, and augmented, at my judgment and
discretion. But the will of the dead must be scrupulously obeyed, even
when we weep over their pertinacity and self-delusion. So, gentle
reader, I bid you farewell, recommending you to such fare as the
mountains of your own country produce; and I will only farther
premise, that each Tale is preceded by a short introduction, mentioning