Tears for a Tinker (31 page)

‘You’ll be expected around three o’ clock in the afternoon, Blun’ Harry,’ said the horseman, who like every one else knew and respected the fiddler, adding,
‘there will be fine food, and plenty mead, my lad, to wet the thrapple.’

Harry waved his hand in a half-hearted gesture. What did it matter to him if the wedding took place in rich hall or lowly barn, or if the drink were good or bad, so long as its effects were the
same. When it came time for the wedding, an old neighbour woman who did more to help Harry than anyone else came by. ‘I’ve brought a clean sark for you, man, and will give you a shave
of those whiskers.’

Harry ran his hand over a rough chin and nodded. When she’d cleaned him up, she guided his feet along and off the causeway. ‘Now, remember and tell them you need to be guided back
over the causeway, because no doubt the drink will have your feet going a different direction from the head, so remember now, lad.’

The friendly horseman met and escorted him to the grand ballroom. When he walked inside, the first thing he noticed was the sound of voices, lots of them, laughing and chatting in a
light-hearted manner. But it wasn’t the voices that alerted him to what kind of room he was in, it was the way the sound carried from floor to ceiling. He’d never been in the house of
the Laird before, and was glad he had come.

After the wedding, when the guests had eaten and finished with all the formalities relating to such occasions, it was Harry’s time to entertain. Requests came thick and fast from all
who’d heard him play, and soon the place was filled with dancing and wonderful music, which along with the fine wine lasted well into the night. One by one the guests headed to bed, leaving a
few late revellers and Harry. For once, the wine which seemed to flow like a water fountain among the guests was not offered to him, but he didn’t mind; the sound of his music travelling
towards the roof and echoing in sweet notes from the walls soothed his spirits.

‘Time to go home,’ said a tired man-servant. ‘Harry, lad, I’ll put your fiddle into its case and some one will help you home.’

Well, there didn’t seem to be any of the fine guests willing to escort the musician home, and soon he found himself pushing his weary feet blindly through heather roots and shrubs. On and
on he went, until he no longer knew where he was or where he was going. The terrain beneath his feet was strange, and once or twice he called for assistance, but it was very late, long past the
bedtime of decent folk. Then, just when he thought he’d never find the causeway, his feet at last felt familiar ground. Edging his way inch by inch, he went on until the smell of wild garlic
filled his nostrils; it grew abundantly behind his cottage.

Thinking he was safely home, he widened his stride; then without warning something wound around his ankles, causing him to fall backwards with a heavy thump. As he attempted to rise, it dawned
on poor Harry that he’d slipped into the bog. All who fell into it knew its peril; the bog had a life of its own. He felt it sucking and pulling him down; it was futile to struggle, the great
marsh had found another victim. Even if a kind neighbour had come to his assistance it would have proved an impossible task; once the bog has hold of a body it does not let go. He struggled all the
same, and tried desperately to find a piece of root of an ancient tree to cling onto, but he’d fallen into a deep part; his life began to ebb away. As his weakened body gave way to its fate,
he thought, ‘well, at least my loneliness will end, and where I go all are like me—blind.’

Now, just as that last breath of life was rushing forth from his crushed lungs, something happened which made him think that he had already passed over into death’s realms.

He found himself standing in a passageway; he could feel slimy, mossy walls and there was hardly any room to stand upright. He felt a sharp tug on his sodden jacket sleeve. He ran shaking
fingers down to feel a tiny hand.

‘Come on, Harry, the wedding feast can’t begin until you’ve played alongside our piper.’

‘I don’t understand—am I dead or not? Is this the place where the passed over go?’

‘Na, na, laddie, this is the world of Elfin; can’t you tell by the size of me?’

‘I am blind and can’t see you. But one minute the bog had hold of me, the next I’m here in this slimy tunnel.’

‘You are our guest. Listen now, Harry, the King’s daughter had been planning her marriage for ages, and decided to have it today, but did the rich Annabelle not decide to have her
wedding too!’

‘What has that got to do with me?’ asked Harry, still unsure if he was dead or not.

‘She had to have a fiddler—not just any fiddler, she had chosen you, man. So we all thought it best to wait until that other wedding was finished, then to bring you down here into
our underworld.’

‘So it was one of you who tripped me up—but how did you manage to get me through the bog?’

‘Never mind asking an elf his secrets, because we keeps them to ourselves. Now come, the food is served, the party awaits and our piper has been eager to play with you since he first heard
you as a boy. I’ll give you a clean-up first, though, because the moss sticks and hardens.’ There was the swish and whoosh of a soft brush, and all the dirt was gone. Harry felt quite
fresh, even although his fiddle arm had been played sore.

Harry was whisked along by the elf at such a speed he thought at first his feet weren’t touching solid ground, and in no time he could hear loud laughter.

A door creaked open. ‘Watch now, and don’t hit your head off the ceiling beams,’ said a sweet-sounding female, who held his hands and guided him in. A great wave of applause
vibrated throughout the place. ‘This is our King,’ he heard the young woman say, ‘and he wants you to begin playing.’

Harry felt a hand grab his; a stout little hand with podgy fingers. ‘Hello, lad, it’s so kind of you to join us; and on behalf of my family and subjects I invite you to take your
place alongside our beloved piper.’

Harry was then led onto a stage where another elf spoke. ‘I’m old Dougal, and I love to hear that fiddle of yours. Sometimes it gets lonely down here, being the only musician, so
with His Majesty’s permission I sometimes sneak onto the bog surface to listen. We all hear your playing and love you, man, so play for us now at the wedding.’

Harry put out his hand at the gentle request of the female elf, and she laid in it his instrument; it had been cleaned, for like him it had been swallowed by the moss and was filthy. Without
knowing or reasoning why, his heart felt overjoyed here in this elfin world, and he slipped the fiddle into its usual comfortable position between his chin and neck, drew back the bow and played
his instrument like it had never been played before. The piper filled his airbag and he too began playing. The harmony was brilliant; not a single foot wasn’t tapping and beating upon the
floor. Tiny elves were shrieking and whirling; Harry felt the breeze they created as they reeled and danced, it was wonderful.

When he rested, it was apparent that his female companion was by his side. She asked if he needed any drink, but they didn’t have human alcoholic drinks only fruit juice. He accepted that,
and as she poured it for him he became aware of her perfume. He touched her face, and felt the most soft skin he’d ever felt. ‘What do you look like, little lady?’ he
enquired.

‘I have curly black hair, we all do, my eyes are green and I am wearing a silken gown made with flower petals. Now my father, the piper, is summoning me to let you play; please go
on.’

‘She sounds so pretty,’ he said to himself, ‘I wish I could see her.’ Then as if the female elf had read his thoughts, she stroked his forehead and ran her hand over his
eyes, and the veil of blindness lifted in the most magical way. His head filled with lights of every colour, and then he saw her. Mira was a picture of loveliness. She gazed into his newly-sighted
eyes, and as their eyes met it was love between them at once. The tiny elfin girl was in love with old Harry, the human fiddler.

‘I cannot let you keep your sight, because it is not allowed,’ she said sadly.

Harry stared at her, and then she faded, leaving him once again in his world of darkness.

He had been able to see for a single moment, and what a vision of beauty he had before him. But alas, it was over, so on and on he played with Dougal by his side, until, exhausted, he could play
no more. The King, his daughter, her new husband and all the guests thanked him from their hearts as they set off to wherever they lived, leaving Harry with old Dougal and Mira.

‘You can go back home now, man, and if my time is right your sun will be rising. Come on, we can’t be seen, or your kind will start emptying our bog land searching for us.’ Old
Dougal had already opened the door for him. Mira slipped her tiny hand into his. It was warm: he closed his fingers upon it and felt a love he had never felt before in his lifetime. Then in a flash
his little new found world was gone, and he found himself lying half in and half out of the bog, with his neighbour’s dog licking his face.

‘Look at the state of you, I warned about that rich wine at the Laird’s house—shame on you!’ His neighbour helped him to his feet, declaiming about the evils of drink as
she guided him home.

If she only knew, he’d not touched a drop that night; and if he seemed intoxicated, then it was because of a moment’s miracle when the little elfin girl gave him sight!

He never divulged that he’d been in the company of the elves, even although he so wished to share with his friends the beauty of Mira and the stirring tunes played on the smallest bagpipes
in the entire world; instead he said nothing. Anyway, who would believe him?

From that day Harry refused all requests to play his fiddle at weddings. He became more and more reclusive, opting instead to sit by the edge of the bog, hoping for one sign of his tiny beloved
presence. Sometimes a dragonfly would whirl around him, and he’d be heard asking the insect how were Mira and Dougal. This behaviour convinced his friends that, after being blind and living
alone for so long, the old man had lost his mind.

Even the kind elderly lady hardly gave him a thought, and came to see him less and less. One day, however, her conscience bothered her about him, so she put some scones in a basket and tottered
along to the low-roofed cottage on the edge of the bog. Finding the place empty, however, she began to think perhaps poor sad Harry had given up his lonely life, opting for a an early death within
the bog. It made no difference how much she searched and called his name, her friend had simply disappeared.

She was old and tired, so for a moment sat down on a stool Harry kept on his porch, when something caught her eye—footprints: two sets that came all the way from the bog and up to the door
of the cottage. She investigated at once, because they were the footprints of children; very small children. She followed them and found at the rear of the house that there were some more, but
these were of normal size, presumably Harry’s. As she went around the side of the house she could clearly see that those tiny footprints were joined by the large ones, then as if transformed
by magic the bigger ones disappeared, and all the way back to the bog were three tiny sets of footprints. This was a complete mystery, and no matter how often she went over it in her head, she
could find no explanation. All she knew was that Harry and his fiddle had gone, and they were never seen again!

The First Famous Labour Colony

So there you have the legend. Now I shall give you some facts relating to the mystery marshlands, that because of a lord’s dream are to this day what we know as the
central pastures of Scotland.

In the latter half of the eighteenth century a remarkable experiment was begun by a remarkable man on his land in the Vale of Menteith, the name given to the upper part of the Forth Valley.
Seven years after the Carron Ironworks were established, Henry Home, Lord Kames, dreamt about turning part of his land which was a barren moor into a fertile plain. He planned to populate land
which was once an uninhabitable quaking bog with scores of happy families.

In 1766 Lord Kames, who had been improving his land in another district, succeeded through his wife to the estate of Blair Drummond, near Doune in Perthshire, part of which included the Carse
land above the point where the Forth and Teith rivers joined. At that time most of the Carse land between Stirling and the Menteith Hills was covered by a dreary expanse of peat, moss and heather
which stretched for twelve miles up the valley, and formed with its deep and treacherous pools an almost impassable morass from one to two miles broad. Known at different places as the Flanders,
Cardross, Kincardine in Menteith or Blairdrummond Moss, it lay to a depth of from 6 to 12 feet over a plain of good fertile land, the surface of which was about 30 feet above the level of high
tides. The underlying ground consisted of fine grey clay with beds of shells, but no stones of any size. He considered it a highly desirable matter to remove the peat and lay bare the good land
below, but how to sweep off the barren covering and reclaim much of the ground in an economically viable way had not yet been discovered.

Lord Kames, although in his seventieth year, had a young heart and a strong mind, and at once set himself the task of tackling the problem. His plan required many years to complete, but he
courageously set to work, and although he did not live to see the end of it, he laid a good foundation, and worked at it for the remaining sixteen years of his life. He died in 1782 at the advanced
age of eighty-six, and his son and successor, George Home Drummond, carried on the work with even greater skill and energy, and introduced several improvements, which eventually brought about the
final and complete success of the old man’s great project.

When in the beginning Lord Kames had the idea of doing it, he approached the ruling fathers in Stirling who laughed at such a ridiculous project. To begin with, where were the skilled hands? Who
knew anything about peat bogs?

Lord Kames had his answers ready: ‘It’s twenty years since the Jacobite uprising. The clan system has been broken up. Many of the poor clansmen have seen their homes burned and been
chased from Scotland to make way for sheep. But you all know there are hundreds of them outlawed and hiding in the hills. They have the skills of working with peat. If pardons are given, I know we
will see them looking for work.’