Devout-under-difficulties would have been the name of Lang Tammas had he been of Covenanting1 times. So I thought one wintry afternoon, years before I went to the school-house, when he dropped in to ask the pleasure of my company to the farmer of Little Rathie's “bural.” As a good Auld2 Licht, Tammas reserved his swallow-tail coat and “lum hat” (chimney-pot) for the kirk and funerals; but the coat would have flapped villanously, to Tammas' eternal ignominy, had he for one rash moment relaxed his hold of the bottom button, and it was only by walking sideways, as horses sometimes try to do, that the hat could be kept at the angle of decorum. Let it not be thought that Tammas had asked me to Little Rathie's funeral on his own responsibility. Burials were among the few events to break the monotony of an Auld Licht winter, and invitations were as much sought after as cards to my lady's dances in the south. This had been a fair average season for Tammas, though of his four burials one had been a bairn's—a mere4 bagatelle5; but had it not been for the death of Little Rathie I would probably not have been out that year at all.
The small farm of Little Rathie lies two miles from Thrums, and Tammas and I trudged6 manfully through the snow, adding to our numbers as we went. The dress of none differed materially from the precentor's, and the general effect was of septuagenarians in each other's best clothes, though living in low-roofed houses had bent7 most of them before their time. By a rearrangement of garments, such as making Tammas change coat, hat, and trousers with Cragiebuckle, Silva McQueen, and Sam'l Wilkie respectively, a dexterous8 tailor might perhaps have supplied each with a “fit.” The talk was chiefly of Little Rathie, and sometimes threatened to become animated9, when another mourner would fall in and restore the more fitting gloom.
“Ay, ay,” the new-comer would say, by way of responding to the sober salutation, “Ay, Johnny.” Then there was silence, but for the “gluck” with which we lifted our feet from the slush.
“So Little Rathie's been ta'en awa',” Johnny would venture to say by and by.
“He's gone, Johnny; ay, man, he is so.”
“Death must come to all,” some one would waken up to murmur10.
“Ay,” Lang Tammas would reply, putting on the coping-stone, “in the morning we are strong and in the evening we are cut down.”
“We are so, Tammas; ou ay, we are so; we're here the wan11 day an' gone the neist.”
“Little Rathie wasna a crittur I took till; no, I canna say he was,” said Bowie Haggart, so called because his legs described a parabola, “but be maks a vary creeditable corp [corpse12]. I will say that for him. It's wonderfu' hoo death improves a body. Ye cudna hae said as Little Rathie was a weel-faured man when he was i' the flesh.”
Bowie was the wright, and attended burials in his official capacity. He had the gift of words to an uncommon13 degree, and I do not forget his crushing blow at the reputation of the poet Burns, as delivered under the auspices14 of the Thrums Literary Society. “I am of opeenion,” said Bowie, “that the works of Burns is of an immoral15 tendency. I have not read them myself, but such is my opeenion.”
“He was a queer stock, Little Rathie, michty queer,” said Tammas Haggart, Bowie's brother, who was a queer stock himself, but was not aware of it; “but, ou, I'm thinkin' the wife had something to do wi't. She was ill to manage, an' Little Rathie hadna the way o' the women. He hadna the knack16 o' managin' them's yo micht say—no, Little Rathie hadna the knack.”
“They're kittle cattle, the women,” said the farmer of Craigiebuckle—son of the Craigiebuckle mentioned elsewhere—a little gloomily. “I've often thocht maiterimony is no onlike the lucky bags th' auld wifies has at the muckly. There's prizes an' blanks baith inside, but, losh, ye're far frae sure what ye'll draw oot when ye put in yer han'.”
“Ou, weel,” said Tammas complacently17, “there's truth in what ye say, but the women can be managed if ye have the knack.”
“Some o' them,” said Cragiebuckle woefully.
“Ye had yer wark wi' the wife yersel, Tammas, so ye had,” observed Lang Tammas, unbending to suit his company.
“Ye're speakin' aboot the bit wife's bural,” said Tammas Haggart, with a chuckle18; “ay, ay, that brocht her to reason.”
Without much pressure Haggart retold a story known to the majority of his hearers. He had not the “knack” of managing women apparently19 when he married, for he and his gypsy wife “agreed ill thegither” at first. Once Chirsty left him and took up her abode20 in a house just across the wynd. Instead of routing her out, Tammas, without taking any one into his confidence, determined21 to treat Chirsty as dead, and celebrate her decease in a “lyke wake”—a last wake. These wakes were very general in Thrums in the old days, though they had ceased to be common by the date of Little Rathie's death. For three days before the burial the friends and neighbors of the mourners were invited into the house to partake of food and drink by the side of the corpse. The dead lay on chairs covered with a white sheet. Dirges22 were sung and the deceased was extolled23, but when night came the lights were extinguished and the corpse was left alone. On the morning of the funeral tables were spread with a white cloth outside the house, and food and drink were placed upon them. No neighbor could pass the tables without paying his respects to the dead; and even when the house was in a busy, narrow thoroughfare, this part of the ceremony was never omitted. Tammas did not give Chirsty a wake inside the house; but one Friday morning—it was market-day, and the square was consequently full—it went through the town that the tables were spread before his door. Young and old collected, wandering round the house, and Tammas stood at the tables in his blacks inviting24 every one to eat and drink. He was pressed to tell what it meant; but nothing could be got from him except that his wife was dead. At times he pressed his hands to his heart, and then he would make wry25 faces, trying hard to cry. Chirsty watched from a window across the street, until she perhaps began to fear that she really was dead. Unable to stand it any longer, she rushed out into her husband's arms, and shortly afterward26 she could have been seen dismantling27 the tables.
“She's gone ............