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Updated: June 28, 2025
If I have concealed my emotions in addressing you it is only the thrawn national way that deceives everybody except Scotsmen. I have not been as dull as I could have wished to be; but looking at your glowing faces cheerfulness and hope would keep breaking through. Despite the imperfections of your betters we leave you a great inheritance, for which others will one day call you to account.
Thrawn Janet is one of these, and the story of Tod Lapraik, told by Andie Dale in Catriona, is another. Stevenson himself declared that if he had never written anything except these two stories he would still have been a writer. We hope that there would be votes cast for Will o' the Mill, which is a lovely bit of literary workmanship. And there are a dozen besides these.
It was only with curiosity that I looked down on the dead face, swollen and livid in the first light of morning. The man had been strangled. His neck, as we say in Scotland, was 'thrawn', and that was why he had lain on his back yet with his face turned away from me. He had been dead probably since before midnight. I looked closer, and saw that there was blood on his shirt and hands, but no wound.
Thrown entirely on their own resources, they decided to write stories and read them to each other. These tales, coloured by the surroundings, were of a sombre cast. Here Thrawn Janet was begun. In a preface, written years later, Mrs. Stevenson gives a graphic description of the first writing of this gloomy but powerful story.
The saughs tossed an' maned thegether, a lang sigh cam' ower the hills, the flame o' the can'le was blawn aboot; an' there stood the corp of Thrawn Janet, wi' her grogram goun an' her black mutch, wi' the heid aye upon the shouther, an' the girn still upon the face o't leevin', ye wad hae said deid, as Mr. Soulis weel kenned upon the threshold o' the manse.
It is a common belief in Scotland that the devil is a black man, as may also be seen in Robert Louis Stevenson’s story “Thrawn Janet.” There is no warrant in the biblical tradition for a black devil. Satan, however, appeared as an Ethiopian as far back as the days of the Church Fathers.
"Wull ye never learn to say dust, ye thrawn deevil?" with a cuff from the opened hand, was the as inevitable rejoinder. Here is Maidie's first letter, before she was six, the spelling unaltered, and there are no "commoes." "MY DEAR ISA I now sit down to answer all your kind and beloved letters which you was so good as to write to me. This is the first time I ever wrote a letter in my Life.
At the hinder end, and a bit feared as was but natural, he lifted the hasp and into the manse; and there was Janet M'Clour before his een, wi' her thrawn craig, and nane sae pleased to see him. And he aye minded sinsyne, when first he set his een upon her, he had the same cauld and deidly grue. 'Janet, says he, 'have you seen a black man? 'A black man? quo' she.
"I dinna ken, but she's greeting sair, and yon can hear how he's rampaging up and down the blue-and-white room. Listen to his thrawn feet! He's raging because she's so long in coming down, and come she daurna. Oh, the poor crittur!" Now, Tommy was very fond of his old school-mistress, and he began to be unhappy with Gavinia.
I've never seed 'e afeared or shaken 'fore the thrawn o' the Most High in your life. But I 'sure 'e, thee'll come to it." "An' you say that! You'm 'mazin' blind, Tregenza, for all you walk in the Light. The Light's dazed 'e, I'm thinkin', same as birds a breakin' theer wings 'gainst lighthouse glasses.
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