Lang John
Stories of the Border Marches
CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE
When the skipper of some small coastal trading craft is able to retire from leading a sea-faring life, it is usually within close range of the briny, tarry whiffs that with every breeze come puffing from the harbour of some little port out of which he has formerly traded that he sets up his shore-going abode. There, when he has paid off for the last time, and everything, so to speak, is coiled down and made ship-shape, he settles within easy hail of old cronies like himself; and if he should chance to be one of those who have lived all their days with only their ship for wife, then he not unnaturally falls easily into the habit of dropping, of an evening, into the snug, well-lit bar-parlour of the "Goat and Compasses" or the "Mariner's Friend," or some such house of entertainment, with its glowing fire and warm, seductive, tobacco-and grog-scented atmosphere, there to wile away the time swopping yarns with old friends. Sometimes, if opportunity offer, he is not averse from a mild game of cards for moderate points; and usually he takes, or at least in old days he used to take, his liquor hot – and strong.
Captain Alexander Craes was one of those retired merchant skippers; but he had not, like the majority of his fellows, settled near the sea-coast. It was Kelso that had drawn him like a loadstone. An inland-bred man, in his boyhood he had run away to sea, and the sea, that had irresistibly woed his youthful fancy, had no whit fulfilled his boyish dreams. It was not always blue, he found; the ship was not always running before a spanking breeze; more kicks than ha'pence, more rope's-endings than blessings, came his way during the first few years of his sailor life. Perhaps it was because he had been ashamed to go back and own himself beaten, or perhaps it was his native Border dourness that had caused him to stick to it; but at any rate he did stick to it – though, like most sailors, he growled, and even swore sometimes, that he hated the life. And now, in the winter of 1784-5, here he was in Kelso, stout, weather-beaten, grey-headed, over fifty, living within earshot of the deep voice of flooded Tweed roaring and fretting over the barrier with which the devil, at bidding of Michael Scott the Wizard, long syne dammed its course. Many a time when the captain's little vessel, close hauled, had been threshing through leaden-grey seas under hurrying, leaden-grey skies and bitter snow squalls, with a foul wind persistently pounding at her day after day, he had thought, as some more than ordinarily angry puff whitened the water to windward and broke him off his course, with the weather leech of his close-reefed topsail shivering, how pleasant it must be to be a landsman, to go where he pleased in spite of wind or weather. Ah! they were the happy ones, those lucky landsmen, who could always do as they chose, blow high, blow low.
Well, here he was at last, drinking in all a landsman's pleasures, enjoying his privileges – and not too old yet, he told himself with self-conscious chuckle, to raise a pleasant flutter of expectation in the hearts of Kelso's widows and maidens. Not that he was a marrying man, he would sometimes protest; far from it, indeed. Yet they did say that the landlord of a rival inn was heard to remark that "the cauptain gaed ower aften to Lucky G – 's howf. It wasna hardlys decent, an' her man no deid a twalmonth." Maybe, however, the good widow's brand of whisky was more grateful to the captain's palate, or the company assembled in her snug parlour lightsomer, or at least less dour, than was to be found at the rival inn, where the landlord was an elder of the kirk and most stern opponent of all lightness and frivolity. Whatever the cause, however, it is certain that the captain did acquire the habit of dropping in very frequently at the widow's, where he was always a welcome guest. And it was from a merry evening there that, with a "tumbler" or two inside his ample waistcoat, he set out for home one black February night when a gusty wind drove thin sleety rain rattling against the window panes of the quiet little town, and emptied the silent, moss-grown streets very effectively.
An hour or two later, it might be, two men, Adam Hislop and William Wallace, were noisily steering a somewhat devious and uncertain course homeward, when one of them tripped over a bulky object huddled on the ground, and with an astonished curse fell heavily.
"What the de'il's that? Guide us, it's a man! Some puir body the waur o' his drink, ah'm thinkin'. Haud up, maister! Losh! it's the cauptain," he cried, as with the not very efficient aid of his friend he tried to raise the prostrate man. But there was more than drink the matter here.
"There's bluid on him!" cried one who had been vainly essaying to clap a battered hat on to the head of the form that lay unconscious in the mud. A hard task it was presently, when his senses began to return, to get the wounded sailor unsteadily on his legs; a harder to get him home. The captain could give but a poor account of how he came to be lying there; thickly and indistinctly he tried to explain that he had laid a course for his own moorings, and had been keeping a bright look-out, when suddenly he had been brought up all standing, and he thought he must have run bows on into some other craft, for he remembered no more than getting a crack over his figurehead. Morning was treading on the heels of night before Hislop and Wallace had got the damaged man home and had left him safely stowed in bed, and themselves were peacefully snoring, unconscious of coming trouble.
A day or two passed quietly, and the damaged man already was little the worse of his adventure. Then, however, the rumour quickly spread that not only had the Captain been assaulted, but that he had been robbed. Gossip flew from tongue to tongue, and folk began to look askance on Wallace and Hislop, muttering that "they aye kenned what was to be the outcome"; for who, thought they, but Wallace and Hislop could have been the robbers? They had found him lying, the worse of liquor, having damaged his head in falling, and they had robbed him, either then or when they undressed him in his room, believing that he would have no recollection of what money he had carried that night, nor, indeed, much of the events of the entire evening. It was all quite plain, said those amateur detectives. They wondered what the fiscal was thinking of that he had not clapped the two in jail lang syne. So it fell out that, almost before they realised their danger, the two men were at Jedburgh, being tried on a capital charge.
The evidence brought against them was for the most part of no great account, and the old sea captain was unable to say that either man had assaulted him, or, indeed, that he had any clear recollection of anything that had happened after he left the inn. They might have got off – indeed they would have got off – but for one unfortunate circumstance, which in the eyes of the jury completely damned them. In possession of one of them was found a guinea, which the captain had no hesitation in identifying as a peculiarly-marked coin which he had carried about with him for many years. That was enough for the jury. They and counsel for the prosecution would credit no explanation.
The story told by Hislop and Wallace was that on the night of the assault they had been drinking and playing cards in a public-house in Kelso; that late in the evening a soldier had come in and had joined in the game, losing a considerable sum; that in consequence of his losses he had produced a guinea, and had asked if any of the company could change it. Hislop had given change, and the guinea found in his possession was that which he had got from the soldier. "A story that would not for a moment hold water," said counsel, when the unfortunate men failed to produce evidence in support of their story; and the judge, in his summing up, agreeing with the opinion of counsel for the prosecution, the jury brought in a verdict of guilty, and both men were condemned to be hanged.
On May 17, 1785, this sentence was carried out. But here arose circumstances which caused the credulous – and in those days most people were credulous – first to doubt, and finally to believe implicitly in the innocence of the convicted men. From first to last Wallace and Hislop had both most strongly protested that they were entirely guiltless. That, of course, went for nothing. But when, on the day of execution, the ropes which were used to hang the poor creatures both broke; when the man who ran to fetch sounder hemp fell as he hurried, and broke his leg, then the credulous and fickle public began to imagine that Providence was intervening to save men falsely convicted. Then, too, the tale spread abroad among a simple-minded people how a girl, sick unto death, had said to her mother that when Hislop's time came she would be in heaven with him; and it was told that as Hislop's body, after execution, was carried into that same tenement, in a room of which the sick girl lay, her spirit fled. Judgment, also, was said to have fallen on a woman who occupied a room in that house, and who had violently and excitedly objected to the body of a hanged man being brought to defile any abode which sheltered her. That same evening the body of her own son, found drowned in Tweed, was carried over that threshold across which she had tried to prevent them from bringing the corpse of Hislop. All these events tended to swing round public opinion, and those who formerly had been most satisfied of their guilt, now most strenuously protested their entire belief in the innocence of the hanged men. The years slipped away, however, and there had arisen nothing either to confirm or to dissipate this belief; only the story remained fresh in the minds of Border folk, and the horror of the last scene grew rather than lessened with repeated telling.
But there is a belief – not always borne out by facts – that "murder will out"; a faith that, "though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small." Ten years had passed, and the spring of 1795 was at hand, when it chanced one day that a citizen of Newcastle, homeward bound from Morpeth, had reached a point on the road near Gosforth; here, without word or challenge, a footpad, springing on to the road, fired a pistol at the postillion of the postchaise, knocking off the man's cap and injuring his face. The frightened horses plunged, and dashed off madly with the vehicle, leaving in the footpad's possession no booty of greater value, however, than the postillion's cap.
Later in the same day the same footpad fired, without effect, on two mounted men, who galloped off and gave the alarm, and a well-armed band setting out from Gosforth soon captured the robber, still with the incriminating postillion's cap in his possession. He was a man named Hall, a soldier belonging to the 6th Regiment of Foot, of which a detachment was then stationed in the district. And he was in uniform, though, as a measure of precaution, and not to make himself too conspicuous, he wore his tunic turned inside out – a disguise that one would pronounce to be something of the simplest.
There was, of course, no possible defence – indeed, he owned up, and at the next assizes was condemned to death. And here the link with the fate of Wallace and Hislop came in. As he lay awaiting execution, Hall confessed that it was he, that February night in 1785, who had stunned and robbed Captain Craes. He had seen the old sailor making his not very steady way homewards, and had followed him, and at the loneliest part of the street, where no house showed a light, he came up behind and tripped him; and as the captain essayed to get again on his feet, Hall had struck him a violent blow on the head with a cudgel, stunning him. The man told, too, how a little later he had gone into a public-house to get a drink, and that there he found some men playing at cards; he had joined them, and had lost money, and one of the men (Hislop, as he afterwards understood) had changed for him a guinea which he had a little time before taken from the pocket of the man he had stunned.
Thus were Wallace and Hislop added to the long list of the victims of circumstantial evidence.
ILLICIT DISTILLING AND SMUGGLING
From about the close of the seventeenth until well on in the nineteenth century, smuggling was carried on to a large extent in the Border counties of England and Scotland, not only as regards the evasion of customs duties on imported articles, but as well in the form of illicit distillation.
In the good old times, better than half-way through the eighteenth century, cargoes consisting of ankers of French brandy, bales of lace, cases of tobacco, boxes of tea, and what not, were "run" almost nightly on certain parts of the coasts of Berwick, Northumberland, and Galloway, borne inland by long strings of pack-horses, and securely hid away in some snug retreat, perhaps far up among the Border hills. Few of the inhabitants but looked with lenient eye on the doings of the "free-traders"; few, very few, deemed it any crime to take advantage of their opportunities for getting liquor, tea, and tobacco at a cheaper rate than they could buy the same articles after they had paid toll to the King. Smuggled goods, too, were thought to possess quality and flavour better than any belonging to those that had come ashore in legitimate fashion; the smuggler's touch, perhaps, in this respect was —
"… sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's breath";
it imparted to the brandy, apparently, a vague, unnameable something that tickled the palate of the drinker, to the tobacco an extra aroma that was grateful to the nostrils of those who smoked it. Nay, the very term "smuggled" raised the standard of those goods in the estimation of some very honest folk, and caused them to smack their lips in anticipation. Perhaps this superstition as to the supreme quality of things smuggled is not even yet wholly dead. Who has not met the hoary waterside ruffian, who, whispering low, – or at least as low as a throat rendered husky by much gin can whisper, – intimates that he can put the "Captain" (he'd promote you to be "Admiral" on the spot if he thought that thereby he might flatter you into buying) on to the "lay" of some cigars – "smuggled," he breathes from behind a black and horny paw, whose condition alone would taint the finest Havanna that ever graced the lips of king or duke – the like of which may be found in no tobacconist's establishment in the United Kingdom. There have been young men, greatly daring, who have been known to traffic with this hoary ruffian, and who have lived to be sadder and wiser men. Of the flavour of those weeds the writer cannot speak, but the reek is as the reek which belches from the Pit of Tophet. However, in the eighteenth century our forefathers, for a variety of reasons, greatly preferred the smuggled goods, and many a squire or wealthy landowner, many a magistrate even, found it by no means to his disadvantage if on occasion he should be a little blind; a still tongue might not unlikely be rewarded by the mysterious arrival of an anker of good French brandy, or by something in the silk, or lace, or tea line for the ladies of his household. People saw no harm in such doings in those good old days; defrauding the revenue was fair game. And if a "gauger" lost his life in some one or other of the bloody encounters that frequently took place between the smugglers and the revenue officers, why, so much the worse for the "gauger." He was an unnecessarily officious sort of a person, who had better have kept out of the way. In fact, popular sentiment was entirely with the smugglers, who by the bulk of the population were regarded with the greatest admiration. Smuggling, indeed, was so much a recognised trade or profession that there was actually a fixed rate at which smuggled goods were conveyed from place to place; for instance, for tea or tobacco from the Solway to Edinburgh the tariff was fifteen shillings per box or bale. A man, therefore, owning three or four horses could, with luck, make a very tidy profit on the carriage, for each horse would carry two packages, and the distances were not great. There was certainly a good sporting chance of the convoy being captured in transit, but the smugglers were daring, determined men, and the possibility of a brush with the preventive officers merely added zest to the affair.
Of the other, the distilling branch of the smugglers' business, a great deal was no doubt done in those lonely hills of Northumberland and Roxburgh and the other Border counties. There they had wealth of fuel, abundance of water, and a plentiful choice of solitary places admirably adapted to their purpose; it was easy to rig up a bothy, or hut of turf thatched with heather, in some secluded spot far from the haunts of inconvenient revenue officers, and a Still that would turn out excellent spirit was not difficult to construct. With reasonable care the thing might be done almost with impunity – though there was never wanting, of course, the not entirely unpleasurable excitement of knowing that you were breaking the law, that somebody might have turned informer, and that at any moment a raid might be made. Every unknown face necessarily meant danger, each stranger was a person to be looked on with suspicion till proved harmless. Even the friends and well-wishers of the illicit distiller did not always act in the way most conducive to his comfort and well-being, for if his still turned out a whisky that was extra seductive, he speedily became so popular, so run after, and the list of his acquaintances so extended, that sooner or later tidings of his whereabouts leaked round to the ears of the gaugers, and arrest, or a hasty midnight flitting, was the outcome. Besides, such popularity became a severe tax on the pocket of the distiller, for the better the whisky the greater the number of those who desired to sample it, and the oftener they sampled it, the more they yearned to repeat the process. Nor was it safe to make a charge for the liquor thus consumed, lest it might chance that some one of those who partook of it might, out of revenge for being charged, lay an information.
About the end of the eighteenth century there lived in a remote glen on Cheviot a Highlander, one Donald M'Donald, who was famous for the softness and flavour of the spirit he distilled. Whether it was a peculiar quality imparted to his whisky by some secret process known only to Donald himself, a knowledge and skill perhaps handed down from father to son from generation to generation, like the secret of the brewing of heather ale that died with the last of the Picts, one cannot say. Only the fact remains that, like the heather ale of old, Donald's whisky was held in high esteem, its effects on the visitors who began in numbers to seek the seclusion of his bothy, as "blessed" as were ever those of that earlier mysterious beverage beloved of our Pictish ancestors:
"From the bonny bells of heather
They brewed a drink long-syne,
Was sweeter far than honey,
Was stronger far than wine.
They brewed it, and they drank it,
And lay in a blessed swound
For days and days together
In their dwellings underground."
Donald M'Donald had formerly been a smuggler, but he had wearied of that too active life, and he had longed for an occupation more sedentary and less strenuous. Distilling suited his temperament to a nicety. It was what he had been used to see as a boy when his parents were alive, for his father before him had been a "skeely" man in that line. So Donald built to himself a kind of hut in a wild, unfrequented glen. A little burn, clear and brown, ran chattering past his door; on the knolls amongst the heather grouse cocks crowed merrily in the sunny August mornings, and the wail of curlews smote sadly on the ear through the long-drawn summer twilights. Seldom did human foot tread the heather of that glen in the days before Donald took up his abode there; to the raven and the mountain-fox, the muir-fowl and the whaup, alone belonged that kingdom.
From afar you might perhaps smell the peat reek as he worked his primitive Still, but unless the smoke of his fire betrayed him, or you knew the secret of his whereabouts, it had been hard to detect the existence of Donald's hut, so skilfully was it constructed, so gently did it blend into the surrounding landscape. Even if it were accidentally come upon, there was nothing immediately visible which could excite suspicion. At a bend in the stream, where the banks were steep, and the burn tumbled noisily over a little linn, dashing past the rowan trees that clung there amongst its rocks, and plunging headlong into a deep black pool, stood Donald's hut. Little better than a "lean-to" against a huge rock, it seemed; at one end a rude doorway, filled by a crazy door that stood ajar, walls of turf, windowless and heather-thatched, innocent of chimney, but with an opening that allowed the smoke of his fires to steal up the face of the rock before it dispersed into the air. That was all that might be seen at first glance – that and a stack of peat near the door. Inside, there were a couple of rough tables, made of boards, one or two even rougher seats, a quantity of heather in a corner, tops upper-most, to serve as a bed; farther "ben," some bulky things more than half hidden in the deep gloom of that part of the hut that was farthest from the door and from the light of the fire. And over and through everything an all-pervading reek of peat that brought water to the eyes of those not inured to such an atmosphere, and caused them to cough grievously. To the Highlander it was nothing; he had been born in such an atmosphere, and had lived in it most of his days. But to visitors it was trying, till Donald's Dew of Cheviot rendered them indifferent to the minor ills of life.
One day, as Donald was busily engaged with his Still, a charge for which he was just about starting, there came to the door of his hut a man leading a horse from which he had just dismounted. This man did not wait for an invitation to enter, but, having made fast his reins to the branch of a neighbouring rowan tree, walked in and sat down, with a mere "Good day."
"A ferry goot tay," politely replied Donald. But he was not altogether happy over the advent of this stranger; there was a something in the manner of the man that roused suspicion. However, there he was. It remained only to make the best of it, and to be careful not to show that he suspected anything. Perhaps the man was harmless after all; and, in any case, it might be just as well to pretend that he was not possessed of any great knowledge of English. There was nothing to be gained by talking.
"Have ye not such a thing as a drop of spirits in the house?" inquired the stranger. "I'm tired with my ride."
Donald "wasna aaltogether sure. Mebbes perhaps there micht pe a wee drappie left in ta bottle." But there was no dearth of fluid in the bottle that, with Highland hospitality, he set before the strange man, along with cheese and oatcake. Donald took a liberal "sup" himself, and sat down, purposely near the door, just in case of any possible coming trouble, and out of the corner of his eye he kept a wary gaze on his uninvited guest, who had also helped himself liberally to the whisky, and was already making a great onslaught on the cheese and oatcake.
"Aye, capital whisky; cap-i-tal whisky," said the stranger graciously. "And I daresay there's more where that came from, if the truth were kenned."
But that was a suggestion which Donald found it convenient to ignore. He had "ferry little English," he said.
"And I daresay, now," pursued the stranger, in tones if anything perhaps a trifle over-hearty, "I daresay, now, the devil a drop of it will ever have helped to line the King's pocket? Eh?"
But here, again, Donald's knowledge of English was at fault; he "wad no pe kennin' fhat his honour's sel' wad pe sayin'."
"And what might your name be?" presently inquired this over-inquisitive guest.
"Ach, it micht joost pe Tonal," said the Highlander.
"Donald? Aye, and what more than Donald?"
"Ooh, there wull pe no muckle mair. They will joost be calling me Tonal M'Tonal."
"Donald M'Donald? Aye, aye. I thought so. Well, Donald, I'm an excise officer, and you've been distilling whisky contrary to the law. I'll just overhaul your premises, and then you'll be coming with me as a prisoner. And you'd best come quietly."
"Preesoner? —Preesoner? Her honour will no be thinkin' o' sic a thing. There micht aiblins pe a thing or twa in ta hoose tat his honour wad pe likin' to tak' away, but it iss no possible tat he can do onything wi' her nainsel'."
"It's no use talking, my mannie. Duty's duty. You must come wi' me."
"Ochon! Ochon! Tuty wull pe a pad thing when it's a wee pit pisness sic as this. Yer honour wull joost be takin' the pits o' things in ta bothy, an' her nainsel' wull gang awa' an' no say naething aboot it at aal."
"I'm not here to argue with you," cried the exciseman, getting impatient. "You're my prisoner. I confiscate everything here. If there's any resistance, I can summon help whenever I please. You'd best come quietly."
"Oh, 'teed tat's ferry hard; surely to cootness very hard indeet. But she wull no pe thinkin' aaltogether tat she wull pe driven joost like a muckle prute beast either. Her nainsel' wull mebbes hef a wheen freends tat could gie her help if she was wantin't. Could ye told me if there wud pe ony o' them tat wad pe seem' yer honour comin' in here?"
"Not one of your friends, my mannie. Nor nobody else."
"Then, by Gott, there wull pe nopody tat wull pe seem' ye go oot," shouted Donald in an excited, high-pitched scream, as he snatched a heavy horse-pistol from behind the door, and cocked it. "If ye finger either your swort or your pistol, your plood wull pe on your ain head. She wull pe plowin' your prains oot."
A very different man this from the submissive, almost cringing, creature of a few minutes back! Now, there stood a man with set mouth and eyes that blazed evilly; the pistol that covered the gauger was steady as a rock, and a dirk in the Highlander's left hand gleamed ominously as it reflected the glow from the fire in the middle of the room.
The exciseman had jumped to his feet at Donald's first outburst. But he had underrated his man, and now it was too late. To attempt to draw a pistol now would be fatal – that was a movement with which he should have opened the affair. The exciseman was disposed to try bluster; but bluster does not always win a trick in the game, more especially when the ace of trumps, in the shape of a pistol, is held by the adversary. In this instance, after a long glance at the Highlander, the gauger's eyes wavered and fell; he swallowed hard in his throat once or twice, and lost colour; and finally he sat down in the seat from which a minute ago he had sprung full of fight. Then slowly, and almost as it seemed, against his own volition, his hand went out and closed on the whisky bottle. He helped himself largely, drank copiously, without diluting too much with water, but still said never a word. Now his colour came back a little, and he nibbled at the oatcake and cheese. Then more whisky. Gradually the man became talkative – even laughed now and then a trifle unsteadily. And all the time Donald kept on him a watchful eye, and had him covered, giving him no opportunity to turn the tables. For here the Highlander saw his chance. He had no wish to murder the gauger, but, at any price, he was not going to be taken. If, however, he kept the man a little longer in his present frame of mind, it was very evident that presently the exciseman would be too tipsy to do anything but go to sleep. And so it proved. From being merely merry – in a fashion somewhat tempered by the ugly, threatening muzzle of a pistol, he became almost friendly; from friendly he became aggrieved, moaning over the insult that a breekless Highlander had put on him; then the sentimental mood seized him, and he wept maudlin tears over the ingratitude and neglect shown to him by his superior officers; finally, in the attempt to sing a most dolorous song, he rolled off his seat and lay on his back, snorting.
As soon as he had satisfied himself that the enemy was genuinely helpless and not shamming, Donald promptly set about saving his own property. The exciseman's horse still stood where his master had left him, hitched to a rowan tree a few yards from the door. Him Donald impressed into his service, and long before morning everything in the hut had been removed to a safe hiding-place, and scarcely a trace was left to show that the law had ever been broken here, or that illicit whisky had been distilled.
Before daylight came, however, the exciseman had awakened in torment – a racking headache, deadly thirst, a mouth suggestive of a bird-cage, all, in fact, that a man might expect who had partaken too freely of raw and fiery whisky. He felt, indeed, extremely and overpoweringly unwell, as, with an infinity of trouble, he groped his devious way to the open air, and to the burn that went singing by. Here, after drinking copiously, he lay till grey dawn, groaning, the thundering of the linn incessantly jarring his splitting head. Then, when there was light enough, the unhappy man rose on unsteady feet, and started looking for his horse. A fruitless search; no sign of a horse could be seen, beyond the trampled space where he had stood the previous night, and a few hoof-prints in the soft, peaty soil elsewhere. There was no help for it; he must tramp; and with throbbing temples he pursued a tottering and uncertain course homewards. Next day he returned, full of schemes of revenge, and with help sufficient to overcome any resistance that Donald and his friends could possibly make, even if they thought it wise to attempt any resistance whatever, which was unlikely.
