The Black Dwarf | Page 8

heart, he was superstitious, and planted many rowans
(mountain ashes) around his hut, as a certain defence against
necromancy. For the same reason, doubtless, he desired to have
rowan-trees set above his grave.
We have stated that David Ritchie loved objects of natural beauty. His
only living favourites were a dog and a cat, to which he was
particularly attached, and his bees, which he treated with great care. He

took a sister, latterly, to live in a hut adjacent to his own, but he did not
permit her to enter it. She was weak in intellect, but not deformed in
person; simple, or rather silly, but not, like her brother, sullen or bizarre.
David was never affectionate to her; it was not in his nature; but he
endured her. He maintained himself and her by the sale of the product
of their garden and bee-hives; and, latterly, they had a small allowance
from the parish. Indeed, in the simple and patriarchal state in which the
country then was, persons in the situation of David and his sister were
sure to be supported. They had only to apply to the next gentleman or
respectable farmer, and were sure to find them equally ready and
willing to supply their very moderate wants. David often received
gratuities from strangers, which he never asked, never refused, and
never seemed to consider as an obligation. He had a right, indeed, to
regard himself as one of Nature's paupers, to whom she gave a title to
be maintained by his kind, even by that deformity which closed against
him all ordinary ways of supporting himself by his own labour. Besides,
a bag was suspended in the mill for David Ritchie's benefit; and those
who were carrying home a melder of meal, seldom failed to add a
GOWPEN [Handful] to the alms-bag of the deformed cripple. In short,
David had no occasion for money, save to purchase snuff, his only
luxury, in which he indulged himself liberally. When he died, in the
beginning of the present century, he was found to have hoarded about
twenty pounds, a habit very consistent with his disposition; for wealth
is power, and power was what David Ritchie desired to possess, as a
compensation for his exclusion from human society.
His sister survived till the publication of the tale to which this brief
notice forms the introduction; and the author is sorry to learn that a sort
of "local sympathy," and the curiosity then expressed concerning the
Author of WAVERLEY and the subjects of his Novels, exposed the
poor woman to enquiries which gave her pain. When pressed about her
brother's peculiarities, she asked, in her turn, why they would not
permit the dead to rest? To others, who pressed for some account of her
parents, she answered in the same tone of feeling.
The author saw this poor, and, it may be said, unhappy man, in autumn
1797 being then, as he has the happiness still to remain, connected by

ties of intimate friendship with the family of the venerable Dr. Adam
Fergusson, the philosopher and historian, who then resided at the
mansion-house of Halyards, in the vale of Manor, about a mile from
Ritchie's hermitage, the author was upon a visit at Halyards, which
lasted for several days, and was made acquainted with this singular
anchorite, whom Dr. Fergusson considered as an extraordinary
character, and whom he assisted in various ways, particularly by the
occasional loan of books. Though the taste of the philosopher and the
poor peasant did not, it may be supposed, always correspond, [I
remember David was particularly anxious to see a book, which he
called, I think, LETTERS TO ELECT LADIES, and which, he said,
was the best composition he had ever read; but Dr. Fergusson's library
did not supply the volume.] Dr. Fergusson considered him as a man of
a powerful capacity and original ideas, but whose mind was thrown off
its just bias by a predominant degree of self-love and self- opinion,
galled by the sense of ridicule and contempt, and avenging itself upon
society, in idea at least, by a gloomy misanthropy.
David Ritchie, besides the utter obscurity of his life while in existence,
had been dead for many years, when it occurred to the author that such
a character might be made a powerful agent in fictitious narrative. He,
accordingly, sketched that of Elshie of the Mucklestane-Moor. The
story was intended to be longer, and the catastrophe more artificially
brought out; but a friendly critic, to whose opinion I subjected the work
in its progress, was of opinion, that the idea of the Solitary was of a
kind too revolting, and more likely to disgust than to interest the reader.
As I had good right to consider my adviser as an excellent judge