The McBrides | Page 6

the smuggling or the distilling of
whisky,--and that is the reason that mothers were wishful that their sons
should be able to "take a horse by the head and a boat by the helm," for
these would be very needful attributes in a handy lad.
And lying there in bed I minded how I once fell in with Jock McGilp,
the captain of the smuggler Seagull, a man that sailed the Gull like a
witch, and cracked his fingers at the Revenue cutters, and this was the
way of it.
When 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