A Scots Quair (100 page)

Chris stirred the fire, looking into it, hearing the Spring wind rising over Duncairn, unending Spring, unending Spring! …. Rain tomorrow, Ewan said from the window, rotten for the march, but they'd got those boots. Then he
came and sat down and looked at her, and asked her, teasing, of what she was dreaming. She said
Of Robert and this faith of
yours. The world's sought faiths for thousands of years and found
only death or unease in them. Yours is just another dark cloud to
me—or a great rock you're trying to push up a hill
.

He said it was the rock was pushing him; and sat dreaming again, who had called Robert dreamer: only for a moment, on the edge of tomorrow, all those tomorrows that awaited his feet by years and tracks Chris would never see, dropping the jargons and shields of his creed, thinking again as once when a boy, openly and honestly, kindly and wise:

There will always be you and I, I think. Mother. It's the old
fight that maybe will never have a finish, whatever the names we
give to it—the fight in the end between
freedom
and
GOD
.

The night was coming in fast Chris saw from her seat on the summit of the Barmekin. Far over, right of Bennachie's ridges, a gathering of gold cloud gleamed a moment then dulled to dun red. The last of the light would be going soon.

Alow her feet, under the hills, she could see the hiddle of Cairndhu, all settled for the night as she'd left it, the two kye milked and the chickens meated, her corn coming fine in the little park that ran up the hill, its green a jade blur in the soft summer light. Tomorrow she'd be out to tackle the turnips, they were coming up fairly choked with weed.

At first they'd been doubtful about letting her the place, doubtful of a woman body at all. But they'd long forgotten her father, John Guthrie, and the ill ta'en in which he had flitted from Echt twenty-three years before. To them she was just a widow-body, Ogilvie, wanting to take on the coarse little place that hadn't had a tenant this many a year. She'd moved in early in the April, setting the house to rights, working till she near bared her hands to the bone, scrubbing it out both but and ben, the room where she herself had been born, the kitchen where she'd sat and heard her mother, long syne, that night the twins were born…. And sometimes in the middle of that work in the house or tinkling a hoe out in
the parks she'd close her eyes a daft minute and think nothing indeed of it all had happened—Kinraddie, Segget, the years in Duncairn—that beside her Will her brother was bending to weed, her father coming striding peak-faced from the house, she might turn and see her mother's face…. And she'd open her eyes and see only the land, enduring, encompassing, the summer hills gurling in the summer heat, unceasing the wail of the peesies far off.

And the folk around helped, were kind in their way, careless of her, she would meet them and see them by this road and gate, they knew little of her, she less of them, she had found the last road she wanted and taken it, concerning none and concerned with none….

Crowned with mists, Bennachie was walking into the night: and Chris moved and sat with her knees hand-clasped, looking far on that world across the plain and the day that did not die there but went east, on and on, over all the world till the morning came, the unending morning somewhere on the world. No twilight land anywhere for shade, sun or night the portion of all, her little shelter in Cairndhu a dream of no-life that could not endure. And that was the best deliverance of all, as she saw it now, sitting here quiet—that that Change who ruled the earth and the sky and the waters underneath the earth, Change whose face she'd once feared to see, whose right hand was Death and whose left hand Life, might be stayed by none of the dreams of men, love, hate, compassion, anger or pity, gods or devils or wild crying to the sky. He passed and repassed in the ways of the wind, Deliverer, Destroyer and Friend in one.

Over in the Hill of Fare, new-timbered, a little belt of rain was falling, a thin screen that blinded the going of the light; behind, as she turned, she saw Skene Loch glimmer and glow a burnished minute; then the rain caught it and swept it from sight and a little wind soughed up the Barmekin. And now behind wind and rain came the darkness.

Lights had sprung up far in the hills, in little touns for a sunset minute while the folk tirred and went off to their beds, miles away, thin peeks in the summer dark.

Time she went home herself.

But she still sat on as one by one the lights went out and the rain came, beating the stones about her, and falling all that night while she still sat there, presently feeling no longer the touch of the rain or hearing the sound of the lapwings going by.

THE END OF
a scots quair

The following fragment is all that survives of the rejected Prelude to the novel. It is in nls ms 26040(3–7), and is printed by kind permission of Mrs Rhea Martin, Gibbon's daughter, and the National Library of Scotland. It consists of five quarto pages of Gibbon's own first-draft typing. Typographical errors have been corrected and spelling brought into line with that of the first edition.

The City of Dundon stands midway the coast where they cease their speaking of beets and speens and take to a gabble of buits and spunes. To the north (but only if you're country and ignorant) they still bake cakes and the folk are meated often enough on a dish of sowans; to the south the old wives still cougg above a girdle set with fine baps of bannocks, thick with fat and dripping with grease. Along that coast in the trawler fleets you come to the city of Aberdeen, genteel with its fine university and proud with a clatter of awful trams, and as full of fine tales as an egg of meat; but if you sail south you come to Dundee, nestling and pressing like an unwashed bairn under the flow of the Sidlaws, dark, you may not see Dundee for a while for the smoke, but you'll smell it long ere your eyes light on it; and what there is there, and what it is like none know unless they're native to the place, or sent to the jail on an awful crime. 

When that Greek man Pytheas sailed these coasts long syne, he halted his boat one season by a little place, a wide bay that stretched with a cream and a froth of grey waters, ebbing and swaying into red mists, late autumn, the waters flung long hands upon the beaches, tearing at his craft. But there he cast anchor, and landed his men, strangers came down to
trade with them, dark, hairy men of that Pictish coast, bringing corn and the skins of beasts, and Pytheas and his men planted there corn and built them huts against the sweep and the ding of that ill coast's rains, pelting and salt-ridden, and watched the winter fade. Spring came with a whirling of sudden rains, and they took to the creaming seas again, and sailed north, out of the life of that land but that the Picts drifted here and built them a city of the long earth-houses, the dark broad men with their Kelt overlords, proud, with long, bronze daggers and curled hair, the men of the chariots and the red blood-sacrifice, kittle folk of a bloody mind and ill heart.

So here, where the Forthie meandered and spun with a seep of red clay down to the landfall of that lost childe Pytheas the little town crawled up into the years and the lights of history, dim and red-tainted, sometimes the outbye men came down to prowl the houses beyond the broch, till the city had a wall built round about, fit to repel the coarse landward men. Behind, on the hills, they built tall forts; and they lived and they died, worshipping their gods; and if it might be that a Dundon chief desired the wife of a Dundon pleb he stole her with unctuous voice and mien, being holy, a Dundon man even then would rape your pouches and cut your throat and tell you a funny joke while he did it, skilly and agreeable, and generally holy.

Well, this was fine, till the Norsemen came, with faces made of sour buttermilk, childes from the stinking straths and byres, squat and strong, black rotten their teeth, they never washed unless they were forced, and they'd better swords than the Dundon folk, so they couldn't force them, apart from the fact that they thought themselves water better used for sailing a boat on than bathing themselves in. So they fought together at that first raid, some of the Northmen got into a hall and found Red Kenneth, the Sheriff of that time, sitting at play at a game of board with his lady, the Red Ane; and the fine Norse childes bulged out their eyes, sore surprised to see a woman unlike their own, not fine and squash, with a face like a mat; and they stripped her, and she
took long to die under the eyes of Red Kenneth, kept raving. But afore they could finish with him as well the Dundon folk were chasing them back to their ships, and they ran with their sour whey faces blood dripping, and scrambled away through the pound and roll of the Forthie, and that was the end of them for the time. But Red Kenneth was a mad [man] from that day, and his tortures the Dundon folk might not endure after the passing of a while, a little squire cut his throat one night and ran and hid in the Dundon wynds that led down to the burned shipwright's halls.

So Dundon was saved from the sour Norse childes, and rebuilt its kirk, and a Saint came there, a childe that cornered the droves of hogs that were pastured, black and grey they would grumph about, on the hills above Dundon itself. And he pressed the townsfolk sore for the prize of their meat, there were starving men about the wynds, some coarse creatures said that his throat should be cut. But instead he died and was made a saint. Good St Machar they christened the corp that had swollen fat on the profit of pigs, and they built a cathedral on his head and filled it full of those Catholic priests, awful creatures with brave gowns on that said when you took a sip at communion you really were eating Jesus Christ, they were awful ignorant folk in those times.

Well, the next thing that happened to Dundon toun was when Wallace came marching up from the south killing the English right and left, he fairly had the right way with vermin, him, and he came and chapped on the Dundon gates, and Dundon looked out and shook at the knees. For they had made pact with the English to kepp the port and give meal and milk in return for remission of all their taxes. So they parleyed till the Scots army lost its patience and battered in the walls, and went in and afore they had finished with that night's work there was surety of a plenty of a population of patriot Scots for the future, no doubt, though the sour folk that were to call themselves fathers were mostly at the time hiding up their lums. Those were fairly the times, there's little doubt, when Scotland had its glory bright and untarnished, folk went half-starved, when they weren't that
they were being broken on the wheel or hanged at the tail of a cart of manure for stealing a penny's worth of meal, or led out and butchered on the dreich Μearns hills, in rain and the di[r]ty on-ding of sleet, white pelting, for the sake of Scotland and god and the wealth to fill up the gentry's pouches.

But trade was coming into the burgh from far and near across the North Sea, from Bergen, brought by the Northmen loons that had taen to carrying packs, not swords, as handless near with the one as the other, they couldn't cope with the Dundon folk, holy and solemn with great crude hands, they would dig in a pack, fell eident like, and get the packman to coup out his wares, and look at them all and walk round about and stare at the sky and scratch their heads and call the wife to bring them a drink (the Northman licking his dried up lips, the tink, as though he needed a drink); and syne's they'd say How much for the pock? and the Northman would say a half-angel, maybe; and at that the Dundon childe would give a groan and argue it out the lave of the day till the birds were heard singing bonnily outbye on the heaps of sharn at each door; and the Northman childe would be dead for sleep and sell the thing for a shilling, Scots, and take to his heels and across the sea and swear that what ever else he might do, try out a sail to Greenland or Iceland, or kill a bear with his naked nieves, he'd be hanged with a tarry length of tow afore he went trading down to Dundon.

They'd tell those coarse stories about their own selves, the Dundon folk, caller, clear-eyed, grey folk with a twinkle deep in Pict eyes, and think no shame. They went on with building their ship yards at last, fine boats, long sailors to the waters of the Baltic, where the beat of the sea on long, long swaps [?swaths] dreich under German suns, fine boats, folk bought them from far and near. And …

There are no entries for places on the map on p.vi but most are treated in notes to the Canongate Classics editions of
Sunset Song
and
Cloud Howe
.