Chapter XI: The People’s Holiday

Since a charter was granted by William the Lyon to enable the inhabitants of Glasgow to hold an annual fair within its bounds, Glasgow Fair has been the great gala of the year to the hordes of craftsmen, factory hands, small traders, wharf and quay men, hewers of wood and drawers of water of every description, with their entire families--from the baby in arms to the big unruly hobbledehoy. Riotous merrymaking is the realization, to a multitude of toilers, of temporary relief from work, and meetings with present cronies and old friends.

Two or three days’ unshackled pursuit of pleasure--more or less hilarious--derives a further spice of excitement from the fact that the fun, as it becomes fast and furious, is in imminent danger of degenerating into folly or worse, that many an aching head and sore heart, some broken bones, incarceration in a city gaol, and an opportunity of returning to the world a sadder and a wiser man, are not infrequent results of the saturnalia.

It matters little to the mass of the revellers that the conditions of the city fair have undergone a great change since its institution; that the staple articles of trade in which the fair originated--the ‘horn, corn, wool, and yarn,’ long the standing toast at every feast in the district--have merged into a great horse and cattle market, in which servants are still ‘arled,’ with the site removed to a different quarter of the city. The Green is given up for the occasion to shooting and drinking booths, sweetie-stands, gorgeously painted shows and caravans, swings and merry-go-rounds, to the proprietors of which enjoyment is combined with profit. Strangers, country people from the Highlands and the Lowlands, roam about, still more entranced than the natives. The children are in Paradise. Bagpipes squeal, fiddles scrape, drums beat ‘Barum, barum, baree.’ The hum of the sing-song speech, the gleeful roar when a crowd laughs, the shouting of the more than half-fou merry-makers, rise above the music, and are borne many a mile away, refined by distance, till they echo with almost a plaintive sound among the rigging of outward-bound ships ‘down Clyde.’

Perhaps the two chief marks of altered fashions which separate the modern from the ancient Glasgow Fairs are to be found in the following signs of the times. There is an almost entire withdrawal of the upper classes from taking any share in the gala, except when evening has fallen and thrown a veil over the scene. Then, under the slight obscurity of a summer night, some of the young choice or unchoice spirits among the Glasgow princes condescend to form parties, and stroll in bands over the ground for the gratification of elbowing their way among their inferiors, cracking jokes right and left, interviewing the giants and the fat girls, or imagining themselves the heroes of not very heroic adventures. Not a conventional gentleman, not a single woman who makes any pretension to being a lady, appears where their grandfathers and grandmothers mixed freely with the multitude, relished the whole spectacle heartily, and claimed their due in the people’s holiday.

Another conspicuous innovation is that, though the numbers of the sight-seers and pleasure-seekers are kept up on the Green, they are always drawn from lower sources, and an Irish flavour like that of Donnybrook is increasing among the elements of the composition. Expeditions and excursions have become the order of the day with the better-class working-people as well as with their employers. The wandering spirit that possesses the men and women of the nineteenth century has reached the Glasgow mechanics. They judge wisely enough that if the weather is favourable, at the height of the season, two things are preferable even to the delights of the Green.

The one is a cheap sail, lasting for several hours, which will carry the passengers in the steamboats far beyond the hazy smoke-tainted atmosphere, where the air blows caller off the salt water, up among the numerous lochs, shadowed by the mountains, that fringe the Western coast. The other is a run by railway to the Campsie or the Farnese Hills, or down into Robbie Burns’s country--green Ayrshire--with wild roses to be pulled from the hedges and horse-gowans by the wayside, and the first hare-bells are to be seen nodding on Castle Downans where fairies dance, and the earliest poppies bursting open in the fields by Kirk Allowa’. The women and children agree with the husbands, fathers, and sweethearts. So the summer navy of steamboats starting from the Broomielaw is doubled and quadrupled. At the railway stations stout guards, bareheaded, without their coats, struggle manfully, no longer red but white in the face, to hold back the invading host, check their tickets, and send them without accident to their destination.

‘Whaur are ye for?’ cries the herculean protector of the public, clutching by the breast an old man far upwards of seventy, as he stumbles on alone to the platform. ‘For the tr-rain,’ answers the piping voice, while the lacklustre eyes gaze wildly in the face of the sturdy, kind inquisitor, as their owner makes the self-evident declaration.

The giant thus delayed in his office, with the thronging thousands pressing upon him, shows marvellous patience.

‘Whatna train, Gruffer?’ he cross-questions the innocent offender, while the speaker seizes the chance to pass his black hand over his steaming brows.

‘Jist the tr-rain for my gude-dochter’s [daughter-in-law’s],’ reiterates the aged traveller a little peevishly at being thus interrupted and kept in the van of the swaying force that have borne him forward on their advancing wave.

‘Weel, ye maun stand aside by me till ye mind whaur your gude-dochter lives. Whaur are you for, mem? Hae you a ticket, laddie?’ and so on, with the ceaseless interrogations to the troops marching without orders, and not knowing whither they are to turn--north, south, east, or west.

In one of the steamers that paddled swiftly down the broad stream, with its decks so covered with passengers that they seemed to occupy every seat that could furnish a resting-place, and to gather in clusters and knots like so many bees, one man looked all alone, and as if he rather drew back out of sight, standing with his hands in his pockets in the shadow of the funnel. His attitude and air were unlike the jovial bearing of the rest of the voyagers, which might well be, since the intruder in the ranks was young Tam Drysdale, with a sneaking inclination to see for himself what the people’s holiday was like. There was indignant bitterness in his heart that they were left to take it all alone, and a regretful remembrance of holidays he had seen abroad--for young Glasgow with a full purse is generally tolerably familiar with the continent and America, though Asia and Africa may hardly yet have entered into his calculations. Tam could recall many a village and even great town, beyond the German Ocean, where princes--not merchant princes merely, but men of royal blood, fit to mate with kings and queens, with their princesses, noblemen and noblewomen not a few--had not scorned to grace the proceedings, as if they were still those of the Middle Ages. The whole company had joined fearlessly in the games, as if the princes belonged to the people and the people to the princes, and had yet one heart between them to be gay or sorry in unison. In this light it did not seem to matter so much as people supposed that these foreign peasants were further back in the knowledge of many things, had a smaller number of comforts, were forced to be more frugal in their ways, while they had infinitely fewer chances of rising in the world.

At the same time, young Tam lingered on the least popular side of the funnel, and could not tell for his life how he was to fraternize with any of the groups around him. His father could have done it far sooner. Auld Tam still held the ‘open sesame,’ though he did not choose to use it. He understood these men and women, by old fellow-feeling and genuine sympathy, a world better than the son with his dreams fathomed their wants and wishes. Even young Tam’s mother and his sister Eppie could have made friends much more readily than he could. Those two would have done it in right of their abounding, sweet, guileless womanhood, in which he had no part.

Still, the incapacity he felt galled the young man as with the sense of an injustice done to him, an artificial barrier foisted upon him, and erected between him and those whom he sought to call his friends. He could not tell exactly what separated him from the humanity around him. It was not lack of goodwill on his part. It was not dress--that frequently potent agent in rearing or levelling dead walls between a man and his neighbour. Tam had thought of that beforehand. He had made an elaborate study of the fact that the better-paid, better-conducted operatives and small shopkeepers--the very people who took their wives and children for excursions on the Fair-days--resigned their moleskins for the occasion, and disported themselves in more or less ill-fitting broadcloth, with a lavish display of white shirt, silver chains across their vests, and tall hats. Tam had accommodated himself to the prevailing standard. He had exchanged his shooting-jacket for the only black frock-coat he possessed, and replaced his wideawake by a chimney-pot hat.

But the general similarity in dress did little or nothing. He was eyed askance, good-looking fellow though he was, not merely by the men he came across, but by all the nicer, more discriminating women, in freshly washed and got up calicoes, or in sober woollen gowns, or in wonderful silks, and hats in which white feathers were the prevailing fashion, or bonnets lavishly crowned with flowers. The wearers of these garments dandled babies, strove to keep small children pinned to their sides, or flirted modestly or violently, according to taste, each with the ‘young chap’ who happened at that time to be in the ascendant in her circle of admirers. But all agreed in giving the cold shoulder, to begin with at least, to the young man who had the air of a gentleman, the wolf in sheep’s clothing whom father might not like, whom Alick or Angus or Jack would almost certainly disapprove of. Even the undisciplined children running all over the deck, getting into everybody’s way, and never out of scrapes, fought shy of Tam. Unlike his father, again, he had no manner for children. Was it his education, or his self-consciousness, or his very anxiety to bridge the social gulf between them, that kept him aloof from his kind?

In the meantime the steamer--another _Iona_, fluttering with flags from stem to stern--was pushing down the river on the sunny yet showery summer day, preceded and followed by many similar vessels, through the labyrinth of shipping from every part of the world--past wharfs and warehouses deserted by toilers--past the yards, well known to the shipbuilders, with skeleton ships on the stocks, where the sheds were forsaken and the din mute. Down and down the living freight went, till green pastures and ripening cornfields began to smile under the very frown of the hills rising in the distance.

Here was the heart-shaped rock of Dumbarton, with the castle where Wallace had lain a prisoner. There were the crowded roofs of Greenock, clustered under its own storm-cloud, hanging over the city churchyard, where Highland Mary was laid to rest. Yonder ran the Tail of the Bank, by which fleets have ridden at anchor, where Colin’s solitary ship was seen through the morning mists by the sharp eyes of the loving gudewife, so fain to tell that her man was ‘come to town.’ This was the entrance to the loch by whose shore the race of Macallum More slept soundly. Across the river the warning white finger of the Cloch Lighthouse bade belated crafts beware. Roseneath was fair as when Jeannie Deans landed under the guardianship of the Duke’s man. At Toward Point the tenderest of Highland tragedies lingered with the memory of the old clan Lamont. At last the twin islands of Bute and Arran came full in sight, and Goatfell rose, brown and grey and russet--not purple as yet--unrivalled from the sea, and held up a rugged face to the fleecy clouds.

The steamer was bound for Rothesay Bay to discharge its load of humanity, in time to rush back again and bring down a fresh cargo before night fell. The company had enjoyed in their own way their dearly-loved ‘water,’ with which, from youth to age, as a rule, their holiday moments were associated. As children they had dabbled in the shallows, as boys and girls they had rowed and fished for ‘podlies’ and ‘golden haddocks;’ at all ages the passengers had sailed, first with their fathers and mothers, next with their mates and sweethearts, and at last with their children, in turn.

But the voyagers bestowed only a general attention on the objects of the shore. The eyes which looked were well acquainted with each landmark, and, as a rule, they were not such eyes as to take in every tint and tone, every glint of light and bar of shadow, by which Nature, in her sameness, is ever new and ever fresh. The gazers liked to hail each peculiar feature. Yes, this was Helensburgh; and that was Gourock; and yonder was Dunoon with its Convalescent Home, from which some of them had profited; and farther down was Innellan, and the steamer was passing the mouth of Loch Striven. But everything was greeted in an easy, off-hand manner, that did not disturb the ‘turns’ up and down, where there was room to turn; the cracks and smokes of cronies, leaning over the side of the vessel, and idly watching its track in the water; the resounding jokes, that seemed to take in hundreds of grinning participants in the effects of the jokers’ wit. The superannuated fiddler near the gangway never wanted large audiences, who turned their shoulders on the scenery, and gave themselves up to the inexhaustible fascination of ‘Jessie the Flower o’ Dumblane’ and ‘The Carse o’ Gowrie.’ It was too early to make the musician’s powers available for regular dancing, even if there had been space for the exercise, so that there were only fitful attempts at solitary exhibitions of the ‘Highland Fling,’ or such individual capers as could be performed on the minimum of boards.

Additional refreshments and stimulants to those of the air and the water soon began to be in request. Not only were baskets and bags opened before the time, and bottles of various dimensions extracted and handed round, while unpropitious women were hospitably pressed ‘to taste,’ and children’s mouths stuffed with cookies and gingerbread, but visits were paid with ever-increasing regularity to the lower regions of the vessel, and returns accomplished each time after longer tarrying and with greater reluctance. The faces of the visitors waxed always a finer, deeper crimson, or a more sodden yellow or white. Eyes became fishier and more inclined to roll. Wagging tongues moved with more difficulty in the mouths which could not hold them. The enemy that is equally alluring to impressionable and to stoical natures, which lends zest to the moments, and ends by stealing away the brains, was on board and at work, though it was not yet noon, answering to the third hour of the day in Eastern countries. These clean, well-to-do workpeople, who had not spirit enough to enjoy themselves without having recourse to other spirits, which leapt at a bound from servants to masters, would soon be neither agreeable nor altogether safe company.

Tam looked around discontentedly, and felt that he had no right to interfere, any more than with gentlemen in their cups, though some of his father’s dyers hung their heads a little, or glared defiance at him, as at a spy, when he nodded a greeting to them in their slinking past him to descend the cabin stairs. The very women looked less respectable than at starting. Many were flushed with anxiety or tortured with apprehension, or they had grown hardened and callous. The last began to gossip loudly and indifferently, to complain, to scold, to importune. They resorted to washing their dirty linen in public, to counting over audibly the cares and crosses in their drudging, slaving lots. Some of them took to asking whether, if there were oblivion and exhilaration going, they should not have their share as well as the men, who were their own masters and the stronger vessels; one or two women descended into the shadier recesses of the steamer, and came back smacking their lips, laughing uproariously, snatching up their babies, cuffing their elder children, bandying coarse taunts and coarser jests with whoever were like-minded, causing young Tam to turn away in dread of attracting their attention, sick with disgust and shame. The bloom of the holidays was brushed off ere they had well begun to a section of the holiday-makers.

Tam had to tell himself over and over again that it was the scum of all mixtures which rose to the top; the mass of the pleasure-party were sober as yet, and he hoped that a considerable portion of them would continue sober to the end. But not one of them wanted him, or owned any sympathy with him. He was as solitary as among the rich and luxuriously living traders, to whose ranks his father had risen, whom the son had been tempted to despise. If anybody spoke to him or showed signs of accepting his overtures to conversation, it was sure to be a forward, senseless, objectionable person, whom he had to cut short. The more reasonable and superior a man or woman was, the more he or she seemed to be endowed with a proud shyness, a modest reserve, a jealous _esprit de corps_ as to the interference of a stranger in joys and sorrows with which he could have nothing to do.

The interloper heard fragments of talk of long and short hours, high and low wages, volunteer corps and volunteer balls, night-classes, Sunday-schools, friendly societies, half-holidays when the brambles were ripe, feats of curling and skating in the dead of winter. But nobody that he cared to listen to desired to listen to him or to exchange experiences with him. He would have liked to tell some dyers who were grouped together speaking of their craft--his father’s trade, for anything that he knew yet his own in the future--all that Dr. Peter had recounted to him of what he had heard when he was young of Papillon, ‘the butterfly Frenchman,’ who had brought the art of dyeing everything save tartan to the banks of the Clyde, and of Mackintosh, the stout Scot, who, among other services to his native town, after he had started the trade in ‘cudbear,’ had the wit to see how much further ‘Turkey-red’ went, and worked under the direction of the stranger till he made the production of Turkey-red one of the arts of Glasgow, as purple was of Tyre.

But though young Tam had come primed with such curious tales, he could not intrude these where there was no sign that either they or their teller would be welcome. His tongue was tied.

In the outer cold in which he stood, young Tam’s heart warmed when he came suddenly on a broad, smiling, familiar face, the owner of which saluted him at once frankly and respectfully. He was an alien in every respect--in his attire, in his speech, in his occupation. He was big, good-natured, blustering Sandy Macnab, the head dog-man at Semple Barns, in kilt, plaid, sporran, and brogues, who, to please himself, was taking an airing and a sail with the ‘Glasgy bodies’ in the general holiday of the Fair. Young Tam did not affect Semple Barns so much as the rest of the family affected their next neighbours. Still, he was there occasionally, and Sandy knew him quite well as the son of Mr. Drysdale, Sir James’s ally. Was Tam to hobnob with Sandy, a gentleman’s servant--one of those hangers-on from feudal times in virtue of artificial needs, to whom Tam, with his radical notions, had objected most strongly? A comical sense of the absurdity of the situation struck Tam. Still, he could not resist exchanging a word with the dog-man, who was full of Celtic vivacity, did not dream of being anything save accessible, while he was too well accustomed to the society of his superiors in rank to take advantage of the circumstances. At present Sandy was perfectly sober.

‘How are Sir James and Lady Semple?’ inquired Tam, as an introduction to the conversation.

‘Sir James and my leddy are well, sir. They went south a week syne, to be out of the way of the Fair. For, as you know, a’ Glasgy gangs pourin’ out of the city in every direction, and neither the road, nor the rail, nor the river is for the gentry at sic times. Sir Jeames is getting less active than he used to be in pushing his way through, and my leddy does not like to be tied down to bide at hame for twa or three days, so they have taken flicht beforehand.’

Tam smiled a faint smile.

‘And is this excursion in your line?’

‘Weel, a sail on the water and a snuff of the hill air are aye in my line,’ said Sandy cordially, ‘though I confess I would rather it had been a “rowin’ boat,” and the hills had been nearer; but a man maun be thankful for sma’ mercies. However, my main errand here was to see what a day’s change would do for a countryman I have on my hands. He was not a’ there, to begin with; and, ‘deed, I think there must have been a want about mysel’ to tak’ sic a handful upon me, with no call save that we were baith acquaint with the peat-reek and the scent of the gale [bog myrtle]. It was a’ that fleechin’ [flattering] sorry Bawby Sed’s doing,’ continued Sandy, in regretful deprecation of his own weakness. ‘She buttered me up about what I had come to, and the service I could render to the man. I wish I had tried the Gaelic Society first.’

‘Who is he, and what is wrong with him?’ asked Tam, not deeply interested, but glad to be on sociable terms with one of his companions.

‘Will your honour come and see?’ suggested Sandy, using one of the old-world phrases that still lingered in his part of the country, not dreaming that it could be anything save acceptable to his companion, who, according to his theories, ought to have preferred to be addressed as ‘Young Tam.’ ‘The infection is all gone, for, if you’ll believe me, the cratur brocht the fivver tramping south with him. He had no sooner been lodged with the dugs than he was laid on his back gowlin’ and rampagin’, clean out of his wits--of which he had never a great stock, in the hicht of the disease, far waur than any yappin’ and scrapin’ o’ the bit beasts. In place of being a help to me he was an awfu’ plague. If I had not first fallen on my feet wi’ a gude maister and mistress, I micht have gotten into grief wi’ them for bringing sickness about the place. But Sir Jeames and my leddy were very considerate and kind. They had in Dr. Murray, and he fetched a nurse from the infirmary, since the sick man was ower bad to be removed, and we a’ feasted on denties from the big hoose. The sinner who had caused the trouble pu’d through, and noo he’s convalescent. But he’s as wake as water, and he hasna gotten his mind--what there was o’t--richt back. I thocht it micht divert him, and the doctor said there was nae harm, to tak’ him for a sail. It was the least thing Bawby Sed could do to look after him. Moreover, she’s aye ready for the road; so if you please, sir, they’re sitting on the sheltered side of the vessel, and if you’ve ony skill in complaints, you’ll maybe step ower and gie’s your opinion.’

Tam had no skill, but he had also no shrinking from the sight of disease, while his refusal might sound, to Sandy, like a cowardly shunning of danger, which the man himself had apparently faced with intrepidity.

The young man began to thread his way with the burly Highlander across the crowded deck. In the middle of the process Tam was surprised by the statement from Sandy: ‘I did not think of it when you spoke to me first, Maister Drysdale, but I’ve just called to mind that Rory--that’s the object’s name--has some notion in his licht head, with which the gentleman your faither has to do.’

‘I do not think my father has ever had much to do with Highlanders out of Glasgow,’ said Tam incredulously. ‘He has been in the Highlands, of course, but he has led too busy a life in Glasgow and at Drysdale Haugh to have had time to make many acquaintances elsewhere.’

‘Very like, sir; only the first time I saw the felly he was speerin’ at Bawby Sed about Drysdale Haugh. He coupled it with the Mackinnons that were there before your time, but he allowed there was a Drysdale in the matter. One of his reasons for takin’ the place of dug-laddie at Semple Barns, and coming out with me, was that we were cheek by jowl wi’ Drysdale Haugh. All through his illness he yammered [murmured] about Drysdales and Mackinnons and the gentleman that cam’ to the island for the shooting, and the charge he left with ane Morag of the Bothie. If Rory has not been aff his head from first to last, it was maist unfortunate that he did not get word of Captain Mackinnon, the young maister’s frien’, while he was staying out at our place for a couple of weeks. A meeting micht have let the cat oot of the poke [bag]--always supposing there is a cat in the poke, and it is not a craze altogether--with which it would be a thoosand pities to fash ony gentleman. But then, Rory was at the hicht of the fivver, not fit to be spoken wi’. ‘Deed he’s not fit yet, when it comes to that--but yonder he is, tied to Bawby Sed’s apron-string.’

Poor Rory of the Shelties had never been much to look at, but now, with the ghastliness of his late illness still blanching his freckled skin, and pinching his long chin, with his short tartan coat hanging loose on his shoulder-blades as if they were two pegs, so that he had double need of the plaid in which he was wrapped, he looked a miserable wreck. Mind as well as body seemed gone, as he sat sunk in his corner, and kept feebly tapping the lid of a snuff-mull which somebody had put into his hand.

Mrs. Seth sprang up the moment she caught a glimpse of Sandy’s waving tartan. ‘Tak’ a turn wi’ him yersel’, Sandy Macnab,’ she enjoined her friend, ‘while I rax [stretch] my banes and see if there’s onybody I ken on board. He’s dreich [dull] company, I’m not sure the braw sail is worth it. For you, Sandy, you’re like a recruiting sergeant in the auld Forty Twa.’ With this propitiatory compliment Mrs. Seth hastily withdrew, lest her purpose should be anticipated.

‘Hoo are ye noo, Rory?’ his patron Sandy addressed the sick man, in the condescending coaxing accents with which he might have spoken to a child. ‘Dinna ye find the wind and the water refreshing?’

‘They mak’ me dizzy,’ said Rory peevishly.

‘Oo! that will wear off,’ said Sandy confidently, ‘and you’ll be as strong as a powny in no time. Wha do you think I’ve brocht to see you? Young Maister Drysdale, of Drysdale Hall and Drysdale Haugh,’ speaking with elaborate distinctness. ‘Div ye hear, Rory?’

‘I’m no deaf, I have the hearing,’ said the invalid, still as ‘fractious as a child,’ but raising himself slightly while he spoke, and fumbling with his claw-like hand on the seat near him, a gleam of cunning purpose coming into his lacklustre eyes. ‘It is Mackinnon of Drysdale Haugh,’ he muttered.

‘There he is at his havers [nonsense] again,’ protested Sandy unceremoniously.

‘I’m afraid my father is all there is to stand for the owner of Drysdale Haugh,’ said young Tam. ‘Have you any claim on the place? Had you anything to do with the Mackinnons? When you are better, if you will come to my father he will see to it.’

But Rory was not listening to the assurance; he was occupied with another source of excitement. His hands were groping convulsively around him. ‘What have you done with my boxie, Sandy Macnab?’ he asked, quivering with passion and distress. ‘It is my kistie I want, and if you’ve stealt it, I’ll have you up before the first justice I can find.’

‘The impidence and ingratitude of the wretch!’ exclaimed Sandy, not discomposing himself, though the scene began to attract attention, to Tam’s annoyance. ‘To think that I would touch his dirty papers!’ betraying by the very terms of the protest that his curiosity had got the better of him.

Then as Rory’s rage subsided into a weak wail, while the lamentable figure rocked backwards and forwards as if it had been that of a woman, compassion replaced wrath in the easy, genial nature of the dog-man. ‘Losh, man, your bit boxie’s safe in the press in your room! Would you gang lugging an auld soldier’s kit with you when you’re taking a pleasure-sail for your health in the company of friends? You’re to have everything you want at my expense--that is, at Sir Jeames’s. Here, drink a drappie from my flask to put heart into you, and set your mind at rest about your boxie.’

Rory made no objection to swallowing the whisky, nor stopped to ascertain whether it was administered by a traitor or a true man, an arrant thief or the most honest of his kind. The draught was potent in his present state; in a few moments he was fast asleep, and likely to remain so for some time, while his outraged keeper called anew for the services of the truant ‘Bawby Sed,’ to ‘hap [wrap] up’ her patient, and keep him in her eye, lest he should ‘loup ower the side of the steamer and become fude for fishes’ in the storm he was making about his boxie, though it was as like as not that he would forget all about it when he awoke. ‘It is his bodily wakeness that mak’s him doubly wake in his mind,’ Sandy explained to all interested. ‘The doctor says when he gets strong again he may be all the man he ever was, which is not saying muckle. I wuss I had never meddled wi’ the wull-cat.’

‘Hout! twa Jock Hielantmen should match are anither,’ jeered a listener.

‘I would like to ken wha you’re calling Jock Hielantmen? You’ll better mind your manners,’ Sandy suddenly fired up, and spluttered haughtily.

Young Tam strolled away, not much exhilarated by the incident, and not troubling to puzzle out the wandering fancy--to which he attached no importance--of a half-witted Highland beggar, as Rory appeared to him.

The steamboat reached the pier in Rothesay Bay, and its company streamed out pell-mell, without spending more than a glance on the semicircle of mountains that closed in a lovely scene. Somehow the disregard of it jarred upon Tam, accompanied as it was by the unvarnished utterance of the popular impression with regard to a little island containing a single house, firmly believed to exist somewhere in the neighbourhood. ‘Ay, it is a funny place, if ye kenned a’, and could get a glimpse o’t,’ a man who was looking earnestly about for the object in question told a neighbour. ‘It’s the Drucken Island, where the rich leddies that forget theirsel’s are shipped aff by their men. But they say the leddies have stealed the key o’ the boathouse, and rowed to the shore, and gotten what they wanted, in spite of the doctor and their keepers, afore now.’

‘Eh! what a drouth [thirst] they maun hae had to risk their lives to slocken [quench] it!’ exclaimed a woman in the vicinity.

‘Lass,’ said a grave companion, ‘they risked and lost mair than their lives afore they ever came there, God help them!’

The sail was over, and it was who should get first on shore and make the most of the land entertainment. A few of the passengers started for Ascog, with its fuschia hedges, the vitrified fort, or the walk to Kingarth, that would take the pedestrians past the fine pleasure-grounds of Mount Stuart. A considerable number had friends in the island, and desired to look them up and claim their hospitality. But the great proportion of the holiday-makers went no farther than the seaside and the green braes, congregating there like ants, occupying every seat and public walk which the inhabitants of the place had for the time forsaken. There were bathing and wading under difficulties, a great deal of tolerably reckless boating, homely picknicking to an enormous extent, and much simple lounging and ‘lazing,’ as well as abundant horse-play. ‘’Arriet and ’Arry,’ represented by Murdoch and Maggie, not only flirted ‘through wind and wet,’ they exhibited their love by showering salt water on each other, and pelting each other with sea sand. There were frequent resorts to the nearest ale-houses, which became in the end choke-full.

Young Tam, through all the baffling, disappointed consciousness of a wasted day, continued doggedly determined to see the holiday to the end. He would not allow himself the respite of a visit to a good hotel and a quiet dinner eaten in welcome retirement. He strode into one of the humbler inns, sharing in the hubbub, took his chance of the knives and forks, and partook of the pies and ale which were the most solid refreshment of the fellow holiday-makers who refused to own him as a fellow. He loitered wistfully among them to the last moment, running with the multitude at the false alarm of a drowned man who was fished out of the water and resuscitated before it was too late, and a lost child that was found sitting chattering on a policeman’s knee. He saw the last of his umbrella in bestowing it on a young couple bent on walking out of earshot of their companions, and being drenched to the skin in one of the sudden down-pours of the latitude--the pair never stopping to thank him for the sacrifice.

Tam re-embarked manfully with his steamboat load, cleared out just in time before the arrival of another consignment of the same kind, flooding Rothesay at sundown with a fresh crowd of riotous strangers, for whom there was neither sleeping accommodation nor return to Glasgow that night. If the weather were fine, they would lie about, like unpicturesque northern lazzaroni, on door-steps, under sheds, against hay-stacks, on the bare hillsides. If the night set in soaking wet--instances had been known of an Icelandic experience--the churches would be thrown open to the dripping, shivering troops of men, women, and children by humane people in authority, who did not find it inconsistent with their religion to discover that churches were made for men, and not men for churches.

In young Tam’s steamer the scum came more and more to the surface. Silenus and his crew prevailed over decent working men and women, who took refuge in effacing themselves and cautiously withdrawing into obscurity. The crowded decks presented an orgie, kept up to a maddening refrain, given forth by hundreds of singing, shouting, and swearing men, bawling women, and crying children. It seemed next to a miracle that the sailors could preserve the faintest remnant of discipline, escape the demoralizing influences around, and continue to manage the ship so as to prevent any hideous accident.

The night wind blew cold, even on a summer evening, the humid climate, which forms an excuse for the frequent resort to the hot wine--the barley-bree of the country--relieved itself by the frequent discharge of pelting showers. The wistfully smiling side of the weather was gone, and only the sulks and tears were left. The shores of the river grew dark and disconsolate. The very river--blue, like the Rhone in some of its more favourable aspects--was now a muddy grey, suggestive of much dirt, which the dredging machines were insufficient to clear away.

Every voyager, except those past feeling, grew chilly and weary. The women drew the skirts of their gowns over the wearers’ shoulders and heads to afford them shelter and to protect finery, of which the feathers were draggled, and the artificial roses drooping. The men buttoned up their coats, turned up the collars, and smoked heavily. The children experienced the consequences of a slight swell on the water and a day’s surfeit.

There was a desperate determination to dance impossible dances, and as much promiscuous embracing as if men were living in the days of the great French Revolution, and vowing eternal liberty, equality, and fraternity.

At last more than one free fight arose, in which Tam, with his broad shoulders, clear head, and indignant heart, felt bound to interfere. Like the grand, inspired legislator--the friend of his people in their slavery--Tam, too, would have said, ‘Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow?’ and would have received the refusal, with reason here, to acknowledge him as a ruler and judge. ‘The redder’s lick’ was ready for him, as for his neighbours. Several men who had broken all bounds in their drunk frenzy turned upon him--‘What are you doing here, young Drysdale, spying ferlies [wonders]? We want nane o’ your countenance. Auld Tam is worth a dizzen o’ you; but we dinna want him nayther, nooadays. Mind your ain bizness; it’s for nae gude ye’re skulking here in oor boat. Is’t oor lasses you’re seekin’?--gentlemen like you can try these tricks--or a handle to haud over our heads if we get into a scrape, or a sham of teaching us to behave like gentlemen? But you’re no a generation out o’ the dirt yoursel’--for a’ your faither’s braw hoose and your mither’s fine carriage. Tak’ you care, young Tam Drysdale, or we’ll gie you a dook [dip] in the water for your pains.’

Tam was surrounded and borne away by some of the sober men in his vicinity. One of them knew him sufficiently, and had enough interest in him, to remonstrate:

‘What made you come with us the day, sir? It was a fule’s errand. It would have been all very weel if it had been a maister’s treat, in which the maister still keeps the upper hand. But the Fair-days are like the daft-days at the New Year, they are an exception to a’ ithers. They belong mair to the riff-raff than to ony ither portion o’ the community. I’ve half made up my mind to stay at hame and shut mysel’ in the hoose with the gudewife and the weans another year; leastways, though Granny at Rothesay be disappointed, I’ll not jine ony o’ the shoals on the water. I question whether Norman himsel’ could have quieted them at sic a time.’

Then Tam remembered there was one ostensible working-day in the year when even his father did not venture to the works or the office. For on the 1st of January (old style) these brethren of labour--descendants of an old severely religious people--the Whigs of the West, having begun the year with their first-footing and their exchange of bottles on every side, were ‘roaring fou,’ almost to a man, for the space of twelve hours--the quietest individual in ordinary circumstances being often the most madly hilarious or brutally violent on these privileged occasions. ‘Ca’ canny till they settle down again,’ had been auld Tam’s wary advice. ‘Puir chiels, they have not sae mony break-oots, and there will be sair heads and shamed faces among them the morn.’