The McBrides | Page 6

I was a lonely boy, dreaming dreams of ages past and long ago, I had a favourite haunt. I made my way to the graveyard and lay among the long lush grass, for the grass grew nowhere so long or so full of sap as in the graveyard, and I thought of all the great warriors of our glens whose bones had been laid in this place, and shivered to think of the hot red blood stilled in death, and the grass roots creeping downwards like tentacles into the chinks of the wood, and sending up great fat greasy blades that sweated in the sun. I hated the grass roots, and dreamed horribly of them piercing into my heart, and drawing the life-blood to feed the bloated sweaty leaves, but the graveyard had an awful fascination for me. Sometimes old men would wander inside the dyke and move slowly to a rude stone and sit there, and I would hear great sighs bursting into the quiet afternoon, when the sun always beat down. But I liked the old men for being there when the ivy rustled on the ruined old chapel wall when the wind was lost, and the starlings flew affrighted from their nests over the mural tablet that told all men to--
FIR GOD 16--
And I feared God very much, and spoke to Him often in my lonely wanderings, when I saw wee men in green coats among the heather, but oftener on the soft green turfy bits on the hill. And one awful time when the hill road was all silent and the grasshoppers hidden and quiet, an eerie humming came into my ears like a language I could not understand, and I felt myself waiting for something. Round the turn of the hill before you come to the old quarry it came, and I stopped stricken as a rabbit when a snake sways before it, for there came towards me a thing like a dog--but such a dog--its shaggy coat was white and its ears only were black, and as it passed its tongue lolled out, and it looked at me through blue eyes with black rims, and I think I feared that thing more than God. But always before I left the graveyard for my hill road home I crept up to a window, and looked into a part of the chapel that was walled off and dark. Great brambles grew in this space and nettles of phenomenal size, with ugly fleshy-looking clots of seeds on them. A gnarled ash-tree had grown and broken the wall, but over against the broken wall were great stones, and one of these I liked best of all, for it made the blood tingle down my back and my eyes see visions. On a warm Sunday I lay half in the window resting on the sill, for the walls were very thick, and I gazed at the foot of the great stone where a plumed helmet was carved, and a sword in its sheath; and round the helmet and sword battle-gear lay as though the warrior had flung down his harness as he rested. In imagination I had girt me with the sword, the plumed helmet was on my head, when my feet were seized and a rumbling voice cried--
"Can ye read?"
"Ay."
"Read that stane. I'm no' a bawkin."
"BLENHEIM. BAMILLIES. OUDENARDE. MALPLAQUET."
"Thayse the battles; read the man's name.
"MAJOR EWAN McBRIDE."
"Ay, ay; come oot," and I was pulled out of the window, and an enormous man stood before me, looking at me with a queer smile, and scratching his neck till I could hear the hairs of his whiskers crickle and snap like breaking twigs.
"D'ye ken who Major Ewan McBride was?"
"No."
"Well--Dan's faither; he was kilt; he's no in there at a'--it's a peety, for things wid hiv been different.
"Eat ye your pease-brose and keep clear o' the weemen, and ye'll be as great a man as him, but never say a word tae Dan. Says you, when ye go home and see him wi' nobody aboot, says you: 'Jock McGilp was saying the turf's in and the gull's a bonny bird.' Mind it noo; 'The turfs in' and 'the gull's a bonny bird.'"
And that night so long ago, when Dan and I kneeled on the stone-flagged floor beside one another and listened to my uncle pray and pray and pray in Gaelic, I whispered--
"Dan."
"What?"
"Jock McGilp was saying . . ."
Uncle gave a great pause after asking "a clean heart," and Dan whispered--
"Come nearer, ye devil, and don't speak so loud, or a' the servants 'll be damned and sent to hell for lack o' attention."
"Jock McGilp was saying the turf was in and the seagull's a bonny bird."
"Wheest noo and listen, ye graceless deevil. . . ."
For a week after that I