University of Virginia Library

I am your mother, and Scripture saith
Thou shalt honour me until death;
Yea, not even death shall set you free
From the honour and duty owing to me;
For what I have willed, and signed, and sealed,
Ere I go to the other world, worse or better,
Though it wound with a wound that shall never be healed,
Thou shalt carry it out to the uttermost letter.
Now, wilt thou promise me this, or no;
And get my blessing before I go?

Yes, there is something upon my mind,
Ill to keep there, and worse to tell;
Yet it's borne upon me that I must find
A way to utter it, ill or well,
To you of all men, and only you.
Sooner than speak I could die the death,
But death will not come to me till I do;
And oh I am weary of life and breath.
Yet my lips shall be sealed, as death can seal them,
And the devil may shuffle the cards, and deal them
To all of you, as he did to me,
If you will not swear to me faithfully,
Over the Book here, to do my will,
Whether you reckon it good or ill.

Oh! you will do all that a son may do,
In honour and right, for his mother's name!
Fine words! But “honour and right” from you
As if your old mother would set you to
Work of dishonour and deed of shame!—
But perhaps you have reason—who can say?
Maybe I taught you to lie and cheat,
And drink and steal, as well as pray:
A rogue is but half a rogue, incomplete
Till he burst out a full-blossomed hypocrite;
So I brought you up in the good old way,
To fit you the better for deeds of dishonour
Your wicked old mother had taken upon her!—
Nay, none of your fondling and kissing and weeping;
That's not in my way; I'd as lief you were heaping
Your fine-scholar words into fine tricks of speech—
Though they bite in the quick, and stick fast as a leech.
I am your mother, and loved you well,
But I never could babble and prattle, or jingle
Small rhymes like a fool with a cap and bell,
Or an idiot bird in the dewy dingle
Squirming away to the gaping forms
That care for nothing but slugs and worms.
Baby or boy, it was not from me
That you learned to be mawkish and womanly.

Cautious and scrupulous!—You have no doubt
You can do what I wish, but you just wish to know it!—
Go, leave me alone; I can die here without
A love that has nothing but fine words to show it.
Ay, ay; you'll do well for yourself in the end,
Ne'er to sign a blank cheque for lover or friend,
Treat the dearest on earth as a possible rogue,
Trust none but yourself—it's the wisdom in vogue,
The counting-house wisdom, proper for those
Of the clerk and the shopkeeper kind, I suppose.
And yet I've heard say, by wise men in my day,
That none are outwitted so easy as they
Who reckon with all men as if they suspect them,
And traffic in caution, and watch to detect them.
But no doubt, you're wise; far wiser than I;
Go your way, then, and leave your old mother to lie
In the death-grips of nature, and wrestle it out,
With a weight on her heart and a fire in her brain,
In death as in life, alone with her pain,
Alone with the devils within and without.

A minister! Tush, they are feckless gear—
All of the kind now I see or hear.
I have been kirk-going all my life,
As maiden and mother, as widow and wife:
It was the thing that we had to do,
Ever as Sabbath or Fast came due,
Girl and boy, young man and maiden,
Burning with passion, or sorrow-laden;
Though why we did it I never knew,
Only that others did it too.
For the Parsons are dumb dogs, turning round,
And scratching their hole in the warmest ground,
And laying them down in the sun to wink,
Drowsing, and dreaming, and thinking they think,
As they mumble the marrowless bones of morals,
Like toothless children gnawing their corals,
Gnawing their corals to soothe their gums
With the kind of watery thought that comes.—
Bonnie-like guides with their whilly-wha,
All about loving, and nothing of law;
All about Gospel, and nothing of hell,
All tinkle-tinkling like a bell,
And telling you ever that all is well.
I heard their sough; but all the time
I would con the words of the Hebrew prophet,
That crashed on the soul with an awful chime,
Like charges of guilt and sin and crime,
And burnt them in with the fires of Tophet.
Ah! these were men: but your minister,
Nowadays, is a weak kind of milliner:
Shaven and smooth, the creature stands
With soft white hands, and long lawn bands,
His weak chest panting a plaintive whine,
As he turns into water the sacred wine
Given by the prophets strong and divine.
That's the one miracle he can do,
Turning the wine into water true.
Leave the minister, then, to his Sunday's sermon:
We have matters of earnest to determine.

So you promise me now to do my will,
Whether you reckon it good or ill.
There, let me see how best to begin
The old, old story of trial and sin.

Look from the window, boy, and see
The bonnie green braes of Borland Glen;
Cornland and woodland and lily-white lea,
Up to the skyline, hill and tree,
All will be yours to the waterhead
Where it flows from the bosom of big Knockbain,
And the Kelpie's pool lies dark and dead
Under the great rocks, towering red,
And only the ripple of water-hen
Stirs its surface, now and then,
As she oars her way from the outer edge
Through the bending ring of spotted sedge,
And the ring of water-lilies, within,
That fringes with beauty the dark pool of sin.
O but Borland Glen is dear to me;
It cost me dear; but it is not that:
Nor yet for its wealth do I love to see
Its soft round hills, or its meadows flat;
But summer and winter I've been there,
Till it filled my heart, and unaware
Its beauty stole away my care.
There are green oak woods on Brierybrae,
And sleek are the kine on Fernielea,
Blithe are the holms of Avongray,
And the sheep-walks good on Ard-na-shee,
And wild thyme blooms, and pansies grow
On many a knoll where harebells blow;
And I sat, and dreamed there long ago.
Yet somehow this day I cannot see
Green oak-scrub, or milk-white lea,
Or the drooping birch, or the red pinetree,
Cows knee-deep in the aftermath,
Or lines of sheep on the mountain path,
Nothing of all I cared for then—
Nought save the frightened water-hen
Rippling the pool beyond the edge
Of water-lily and spotted sedge.
But all the long, green glen is mine,
And I'll pay the price that it may be thine:
I counted the cost when I had it to do,
And I will not shrink when the bill is due.

You were a baby when I came here,
And I was a widow of half a year,
Poorly left when your father died:
But I was not one to sit down and pine,
And wring my useless hands and whine,
While work might be done, and the world was wide.
So I came to keep house for the Laird, for all
Was going to wreek here in Borland Hall;
And he was a far-off cousin; I trow
He counted kin with my mother somehow.

He was a widower, and he had
Only a girl to heir the land;
Never before had they failed of a lad
To follow his father, good or bad,
And take the reins from his failing hand.
And it irked the Laird, though he loved her dearly—
As well he might, his bonnie May,
For meet her late, or meet her early,
Ever she met you blithe and gay;
Ever so dainty, white and saintly,
Scented ever with perfume faintly,
Flitting like butterfly over the green
In clouds of muslin soft and clean,
With a flower in her hair, and a song on her lips,
Thrilling with joy to her finger-tips.
Yet fondly as he loved the maiden
Tripping about in the garden trim,
Like a gleam of light, with her figure slim,
Now and then he was heavy laden
That Borlands of Borland should end with him.

I liked her not from the first, for she
Came ever between me and a thought
Growing up in my heart, and warming me
With a hope that gladdened my widowed lot:
But soft and silly, she knew it not,
And vowed she should be broken-hearted,
To be like me from my baby parted.
I liked her not, but I will not lie,
It was partly because she was better than I,
For I was not good, and I did not try.
There are people whose blood is honey and milk,
And people whose veins are filled with gall;
As some are born to the gold and silk,
And some must be beggars, and go to the wall;
There's a higher than we that orders all.
She was gentle and good, and I was not;
But I had the wit and the keener thought.

So all the while I hated her:
She stood between me and the thought
That silently in my bosom wrought,
Like the leaven that makes so little stir,
Yet changes every grain of the meal;
I knew it was there, but did not dare
To bring it forth to the open air,
And face the thought which I liked to feel:
Till one day—I can ne'er forget—
She bent across the Kelpie's pool,
To seize a water-lily wet,
That shewed its egg-cup, yellow and full,
Just outside the fringe of sedge,
As the water-hen oared from the muddy edge;
When plunge into the loch she fell,
And I felt my heart leap with the hope of Hell.
At first, she laughed, then screamed, I ween,
As deep she sank in the muddy slush;
A little more, and there had been
But a bubble of air, and an awful hush,
And the whish of the sedges in the wind,
And the laughter that rippled my heart and mind.—
Nay, stare not so with horror; I
Wished it, but did not let her die;
I was not wicked enough for that,
Though I felt my heart go pit-a-pat,
And it was not with sorrow or fear or pain;
But I knew the thing that was in me then.
It was not of myself I thought,
It was not for myself I wrought,
It was not hate that prompted me,
It was the love I bore to thee:
I only sinned, if sin was done,
For the love I bore to my only son.
And yet you look on your mother's face
With a horror-stricken and ghastly stare!
I tell you I was not near the place
When her stifled scream rose in the air:
But I ran, and drew the silly fool,
Draggled and dazed, from the Kelpie's pool.
That night he vowed that he would make
A home for you in Borland Hall,
And love you for your mother's sake,
Only next to her who was heir of all;
And what less could they do or say
To her who had saved the bonnie May?

Thus it was that you came here,
And then my way of life was clear.
I saw you playing among the flowers,
I heard your laugh in the ringing woods,
O'er the tiny nests, and their tiny broods,
And I sware that the land should all be ours.
You were but a child, not two years old,
But your looks were sunny, your ways were bold,
And the Laird was fond of you. Had she been
A baby like you!—for a moment I thought of it,
Till I plainly saw that I could make nought of it—
You might have married the pretty May-queen;
But she made a doll of you, petted and kissed you,
Told you stories, and deared you, and dressed you,
Called you her wee pet darling, and won
Your love so, she turned my heart into stone;
For I—I was selling my soul for you;
And there was she, coming between us two.
I was not a young mother, and had but you,
And she, with the wealth of her youth, would steal
The only joy that my heart could feel!

Coming about the house just then
Was one of your fine-feathered, gay young men,
Curled and scented, ringed and gloved,
Selfish and useless, and feeble of will,
With nothing to do but his time to kill,
Take care of himself, and be tenderly loved,
Quote the old Poets, and sing the new songs,
And talk about younger sons and their wrongs
In the evil days he had fallen upon,
When they had to compete with the grocer's son—
One of the sort that fathers hate,
But girls will fancy to be their Fate.
Idly he loitered shooting and fishing,
And mending the world in the evening with wishing;
Idle and listless. What could I do?
Was it my affair how he came and went?
I could not be keeping her always in view;
And I did tell the Laird, and I warned her too,
But she only looked injured innocent.
So he came and went, though her father forbade,
And I saw her sicken of love to the lad,
Sicken of love, and saunter away
Through the woodland paths in the evening grey,
Looking so listless till the hour,
Looking so fevered when it came;
And I just stood by my drooping flower
Quietly seeing her play my game;
And who shall say that I was to blame?
The Laird did not blame me, with all his wrath,—
And terrible was the storm which broke
That morning when the household woke,
And the little bird was not found in her nest,
Nor flitting about the garden path,
Nor came evermore to be caressed,
Or to fasten the dewy flower in his breast.
And he never looked on his bonnie May
After she wedded her popinjay.

The Laird was a fool—He was sharp with his wit,
Critical, clever, but still a fool.
With scheme after scheme he was fever-smit,
And somebody always made him a tool;
But when he was most in his logic-fit,
Then most of all would he play the fool.
Now, he would lay you out plans sagacious,
Of planting, draining, and strange manures;
Brimful now of reforms audacious,
Oh but he had new-fangled cures,
Would have poisoned the sweet-breathed cows in the byre,
Only we flung the rank trash in the fire—
Every one knew the Laird and his way,
And quietly heard what he had to say,
But none for a moment thought to obey.
He was never so happy as when he had
Poets and painters, good or bad,
Actors and fiddlers and editor folk,
Fishing the water from bank and rock,
And gathered at evening round his table,
Jesting and drinking, as each was able,
And story-telling with laughter long,
Till the early cock from the roost would crow,
And the laverock lilted his morning song,
And it was time for the maids to go
A way to the kine on the meadows low.
Oh but there was no care or thrift,
Only how to spend, and how to shift,
How to borrow, and how to lend;
And nobody looked to the bitter end.

There would be botanists now to dine,
Dry as their withered leaves and flowers!
We did not stint their meat and wine,
We did not grudge the weary hours,
Pottering along the glens and brooks
With microscopes, or fishing-hooks;
But when they spoke of shrubs and trees
In other lands beyond the seas,
Nothing would do but the Laird must send,
And bring them here from the far world's end,
Though where to plant them nobody knew,
And they rotted away in the sun and dew.
And prints and pictures must be bought,
Wherever the money was to be got,
When he had artist visitors,
Though they covered the walls, and stood on the floors,
And crowded out in the corridors—
Dusty rubbish that cost a ransom.
And our rhymers and fiddlers and actors gay
Were always borrowing something handsome,
And always forgetting the time to pay.
But the Laird must be patron of all the arts
When he should have been seeing to ploughs and carts;
And food and drink were never spared:
The factor's books were never squared;
And groom in the stable, woodland ranger,
Scullion wench, and lass in the byre,
All were living at hack and manger,
With hardly a peat for the parlour fire:
And had I not taken his gear in hand,
The Laird would have lost every acre of land.

So I looked into this, and saw to that,
And had my eye upon everything:
There was not a tinker, or beggar's brat
Got handful of meal from the kitchen bing,
Nor a toothless tyke, or a useless cat
Was left to lie on a rug or mat,
Doing nought for its meat and drink,
But only to lie in the sun and wink.
I taught the household, man and maid,
To waste not a crumb of their master's bread,
To waste not an hour of their master's day,
Gadding about as it was their way;
But to rise with the sun the whole year round,
And to work with the sun in house or ground:—
God was working and so must we,
They could rest on the Sabbath as well as He:
They must do their duty to man and beast,
Ere they get food or wage off me;
And I would not see their master fleeced,
And brought by their waste to poverty.—
We had many sharp words; but sharper still
The ways that I took to have my will.

He was angry, of course, when they complained:—
I counted on that—he was grieved and pained;
For Borland Hall had always been
Noted well for its kindly ways
To beast and body, and all who had seen,
Feckless creatures! the best of their days;
And from mother to daughter, as each had grown,
Service there had been handed down.
I only said, “We must begin
To save the money we cannot win:
And all had been waste, and spendthrift all,
In stable and bothie, in byre and hall;
But service should be service true,
If I had anything there to do.
Fitter it were his father's son
Should clip and pare at the other end
Where the waste was most, and the ruin done;
But they were neither kith nor friend,
That saw, and did nothing to make or mend.
Was there not a bond on Brierybrae?
And a wadset heavy on Fernielea?
And what would he do when his hairs were grey,
And the fiddlers had fiddled his land away?
And it was breaking my heart to see
The wanton waste upon every hand
That was robbing him both of house and land.”

Thus it was that, day by day,
And bit by bit, I got my way.
I scraped and pinched, but I saw to it
That the Laird was served with all things fit,
All in their season, good and plenty:—
He was just the man to be nice and dainty.
And I gathered moneys, here and there,
To meet his bills when they came due:
He had careless grown from very care;
To be able to pay was something new,
And resting on me, scarce aware,
He had more of ease than he ever knew.
That made him think; so he brought to me
Papers to find what his debts might be;
He had tried to make out, but he tried in vain;
They bothered his head till it ached with pain.

That was just what I wished; so I summed up his debts,
And sorted his papers, bills and bets;
And I made him give heed to the plans I laid—
At least he agreed to all I said,
And learnt to lean on me, and leant.
We thinned the woods, and raised the rent—
The land was good, and underlet—
And the running bills, with their heavy per cent.,
And all the careless rust of debt.
We began, at once, to be clearing off,
Learning never to mind the scoff
Of fools that trust in a chance tomorrow,
Learning the worth of honest thrift,
And the shabbiness of the debtor's shift.
So happily now the days went by:
Our geniuses were not so many,
But happier we for the want of any:—
Always hungry and always dry,
Always hankering for the penny,
Always forgetting the time to pay;
I found the means to keep them away.
We were not patrons now of art,
We heard not many sayings smart:
We got not dedications fine,
Nor long accounts for costly wine:
We were not the great man we had been;
We saw not the grand days we had seen;
But plack and penny we paid our way,
And were not afraid of the reckoning day.

He leant on me, and took to you;
But he came in the end to stint and pare,
Now that he had not a child to heir
The hoarded wealth, as it daily grew;
And I think I scorned him for his greed
Even more than for his wastefulness:
It was myself that had sown the seed,
And yet I scorned him none the less;
He was less of the gallant gentleman,
Since all his thoughts upon money ran.
He grudged my wage, he grudged to you
The schooling meet and the clothing due,
And I think it was only in hope to save,
And keep together his goods and gear,
That he wedded me, when he saw his grave
And the end of all things drawing near.
But wedded we were, and then he sent,
And signed and sealed with the Notary,
And over all the land he went—
The land he had orderly willed to me,
To hold and keep, sell or dispone,
Ploughland and pasture, hill and wood,
Fishing and messuage, every rood,
All the rights that had been his own,
And his fathers before him, ages gone,
From the big Nine-stanes to the Kelpie's pool,
And along the hills to the skyline clear,
The good corn lands by the kirk and school,
And the sunny haughs for kine and steer,
The bonnie green woods of Brierybrae,
And the long sheep-walks, and the peat moss blae.
It is all set down in a clerkly hand,
And he writ me heir of all the land;
He was sane in mind and body as you,
And he went to kirk and market too.
Boy, look not on me so glum and cold:
I did nothing was wrong; or if I did
It was all for you, that you might hold
Your own with the bravest, and none forbid.
And so you shall too, whatever they say
Of me,—it's little I care for them;
For if I have sinned, I am ready to pay
The stake that I lost when I played my game.
But I did nothing wrong, I did my duty;
And the girl was vain in her wilful beauty;
And he would never have named me heir,
If the thing that I did had not been fair.
And your right, at least, has never a flaw;
It is sound in morals, and clear in law:
My soul may suffer — that's my concern;
It can hardly be worse than it has been of late,
It can hardly be worse though it frizzle and burn
In the quenchless fires of the sinner's fate.
But with me and my guilt, you have nothing to do;
And you've pledged me your word, if they plea it with you—
She and her popinjay husband are dead,
But there were children, people said,
And it's not to be doubted they'll try the law,
And search the will for a loop or flaw—
But you'll grip to the land, and be laird of all
The bonnie green glen, and Borland Hall.

What say you? what?—You cannot do it!
You take back your word that you gave ere you knew it!
You palter with faith, and play with an oath,
Hard on your mother, and false to your troth!
You have scruples, forsooth, to do my will,
But never a scruple to break your word,
Never a scruple, although you kill
The mother that bore you, and loved you still
Better, woe's me! than she loved her Lord!
Can it be I have sold my soul for nought,
Counting the cost, and ready to pay?
Shall I fail in the thing so dearly bought?
And you—will you be the one to say,
“She gambled away her soul for me;
And only the devil shall profit by it?”
Hark! how the wind is howling! see
The sun is out in its maddest riot;
How the great trees moan and creak, and toss
Their big arms, hairy and rough with moss,
And shake to their roots with ‘the sudden shocks!
Terrible to the cowering flocks.
I knew they would come, and let them come:
I never had faith in the dainty hum
Of new-fangled doctrine buzzed about,
As if hell and the devil were all a doubt.
But let them come; I am well content
Eternal justice should be done,
And the guilty reap their punishment,
And the Lord be true, and He alone.
But I have your oath, and I hold you to it,
And earth or heaven may not undo it,
Your oath on the book, and you'll keep it truly,
And grip to the land I have willed you duly.
If her bairns are poor, there is money in hand,
Quite as much as the worth of the land
When I took the charge of it;—give them that;
I have not squandered goods or gear,
Nor wasted any gift I gat
On belly or back, this many a year;
But seeing the break-neck laird of Rhynns
Racing as fast as horse and bet
Could run him into the black Gazette,
I thought we might add his scrubs and whins,
Some day yet, to our bonnie glen—
They're better sport for gentlemen.—
But give them the gold, if they make a rout;
Maybe it were a good turn to me,
If you helped them a bit in their poverty,—
But that's little better than papistry.—
Only grip to the land, and plea it out;
It is yours by right, there is never a doubt.

Scarce were the words from her mouth, when, lo! the hand with its puckered skin
Powerless fell at her side, her side that was all drawn in
By a sudden stroke, and her eyes were hard and set, and she tried
Vainly to say something more. Wildly he pled with her, cried
For pity to the great Heavens, but she nor they replied;
And so it went on through the night, until at cock-crowing she died.