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Therefore, on a bright June morning, as bright as that of his sad birth-day and his mother's death-day, twenty-one years before, the earl awoke to the sound of music playing if the national pipes of the peninsula could be called music underneath his window, and heard his good neighbors from the clachan, young and old, men, women, and bairns, uniting their voices in one hearty shout, wishing "A lang life and a merry ane" to the Earl of Cairnforth.
Everybody was there, and there was a general closing up of ranks and taking stock of our losses in dead or disabled that had fallen during the past year. It was a very wet night, and I remember that we sang 'Auld Lang Syne' with our feet in the Polo Championship Cup, and our heads among the stars, and swore that we were all dear friends.
The most uncanny thing about the kirk was the precentor's box beneath the pulpit. Three Auld Licht ministers I have known, but I can only conceive one precentor. Lang Tammas's box was much too small for him. Since his disappearance from Thrums I believe they have paid him the compliment of enlarging it for a smaller man no doubt with the feeling that Tammas alone could look like a Christian in it.
It's born with me lies in my very blude and bane. Why, man, the lads of Westburnflat, for ten lang descents, have been reivers and lifters. They have all drunk hard, lived high, taking deep revenge for light offence, and never wanted gear for the winning." "Right; and thou art as thorough-bred a wolf," said the Dwarf, "as ever leapt a lamb-fold at night. On what hell's errand art thou bound now?"
The water gently down a level slid, With little din, but couthy what it made; On ilka side the trees grew thick and lang, And wi' the wild birds' notes were a' in sang; On either side, a full bow-shot and mair, The green was even, gowany, and fair; With easy slope on every hand the braes To the hills' feet with scatter'd bushes raise; With goats and sheep aboon, and kye below, The bonny banks all in a swarm did go.*
Lang, looking ill, and worn to a shadow, seemed grave and abstracted, and full of thoughts which she did not share with any one. She was often absent, too, on business of which she did not speak.
The war taught us many and many a thing, but none that was worth mair to us than this. It taught us that we were invincible sae lang as we stood together, we folk who speak the common English tongue. Noo, there's something we knew before, did we no? Yet we didna act upon our knowledge. Shall we ha' to have anither lesson like the one that's past and done wi', sometime in the future?
But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred A whole one; and my heart flies to my head As "Auld Lang Syne" brings Scotland, one and all Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams, The Dee, the Don, Balgounie's brig's black wall All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall, Like Banquo's offspring...
She pressed her face to the pane again, murmuring that exquisite poem of Andrew Lang: "Spooning is innocuous and needn't have a sequel, But recollect, if spoon you must, spoon only with your equal." Standing there, watching the moths, we became rather silent I don't know why. The fire in the range had gone out; the candle-flame, flaring above a saucer of melted wax, sank lower and lower.
There's a place where their berlins and galleys, as they ca'd them, used to lie in lang syne, but it's no used now, because it's ill carrying gudes up the narrow stairs or ower the rocks. Whiles of a moonlight night I have landed articles there, though.
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