The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

An old Scotch house, only one room wide,
But four storeys high, with “a turnpike stair”
That corkscrewed up a round tower on its side,
With the outhouses made three parts of a square;
A quaint coat-of-arms o'er the bignailed door
Had roughly been carved on the red sand stone,
And the gate to the square, which the same arms bore,
Was arched overhead with a whale's jawbone.

The laird was a squat little hardfeatured man,
Something deaf in the hearing, and bowed in the legs,
Careful to waste nought, and get all he can
For his oats and his bere, and his butter and eggs;
His mother lived still in the kitchen there,
For the parlour was draughty, the dining-room grim,
With no sort of comfort, the laird would declare,
From portraits of old lairds that glowered down at him.

For some of them had red coats, and whips in their hand,
Some, gay powdered heads and laceruffles fine,
And the red coats and ruffles meant acres of land,
The laird could not think of, and cheerfully dine;

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Yet the “Madams” were worse, with their head-tires and frills
And satins, every yard of which had cost him dear;
For the clothing of their backs they had stript half his hills,
And they were not like his mother for all their fine gear.

Rarely in the parlour, then, Cobairdy would sit,
And never in the dining-room, for that made him glum
To think how his forebears, men of little wit,
Had parted with his acres for all time to come;
Racing and dressing and rattling at the dice,
To rob him of half his bonny green hills,
Drinking and card-playing, and dabbling in vice,
Till there was little left him but wadsets and bills.

Each night by the big kitchen fire he was seen,
Where an oil-cruse and rushwick bleared through the reek,
He and his mother, with a draught-board between,
Playing a long game would last near a week:
'Twas a saving of fire, and a saving of light,
And twice as much comfort, and half as much care;
And as for the game, if he lost in a night
A penny to his mother, it was neither here nor there.

And day after day, with the sickle or the flail,
Or the harrow or the plough he would toil, and not tire;
And night after night, his mother would not fail
To set forth the draught-board beside the peat-fire;
Only on the Sundays, when they came from the Kirk,
And saw to the kye, and their fodder and their drink,
For the draughts they had “Boston” to read in the mirk,
And maybe o'er his pages would get just a wink.

Few were their words as they sat there alone,
With the “lass” at her wheel, for no idleness was there;
And five and forty years now had thus come and gone,
And the gear was aye growing, but the laird had grizzly hair;
Then his old mother sickened in the fall of the year
When most she was needed, as the long nights came,
And before the oak leaves were yellow all and sere
He laid her in the kirkyard with the rest of his name.

He laid her in the kirkyard, and turned round his head,
With a lump in his throat and a tear in his eye,
And thanked us for the honour we had shown to the dead,
And also he was glad that the day had been dry;
Could his mother but have known, the house had been right
His friends to receive, as they surely ought to be,
And a proud woman she would have been that night
To witness the respect of such a good company.

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Then he took off his hat, and took from its crown
A yard of red cotton, and bowed to us low,
“Cried gee!” to the cart horse, and then sat him down
Just where the coffin lay a little while ago;
And home came the poor laird, and went to the byre,
And patted brown Crummie, his old mother's pet,
And stared at her hens, and her ducks in the mire,
And vowed they should live, though they brought him in debt.

What could he do then? He tried for a time
“The Fourfold State” of the children of men;
Good were the words, and the doctrine was prime,
But it was a week day, and who could read then?
Not one good thought got he into his mind
Of all that the good man tried hard to say;
And the more that he read, the more he grew blind,
And oh but his old heart was “dowie and wae.”

At last, looking round to “the lass” at her wheel,
“Jeanie,” he said, “will ye bring your stool near?
My mother's awa', but I think she would feel
Better pleased if I went on as when she was here.
I've tried hard to read, but, instead of the book,
I see her old face, Jeanie, there where she sat,
And how, when she gave me a check, she would look—
And we had not half finshed the game we were at.”

So the laird and his Jeanie sat down by the fire,
With the cruse and the rushwick to light up their play;
And she played her game well both in kitchen and byre,
For Crummie grew sleek and Cobairdy grew gay.
And now she's the “leddy,” as braw as the best,
And sits in the parlour, and dines in the hall,
And her picture is hung by the laird's, with the rest
Of the red coats and farthingales high on the wall.