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Updated: June 26, 2025
Over the low-arched gateway which led into the yard there was a carved stone, exhibiting some attempt at armorial bearings; and above the inner entrance hung, and had hung, for many years, the mouldering hatchment, which announced that umquhile Laurence Dumbie of Dumbiedikes had been gathered to his fathers in Newbattle kirkyard.
It was the passionate break on that word, even more than the spice in the blue eyes, that went straight to the shadowed spot in Andrew's heart and found the little sprig of memorial heather, hidden there, the mountain heather, the tiny, pinkish blossoms, with the faint, wild tang, which he plucked whenever he went home to Scotland from a small grave in a hillside "kirkyard" on whose granite marker was printed: "Margery Campbell, aged fifteen!"
Torrance the minister, is borrowed direct from life, as indeed are the whole figure and its surroundings kirkyard, kirk, and manse down even to the black thread mittens: witness the following passage from a letter of the early seventies: "I've been to church and am not depressed a great step.
"To come hame, I behoved to ken whare hame was; now, I had clean tint the name of the wynd, and the mair I asked, the mair the folk leugh, and the farther they sent me wrang; sae I gave it up till God should send daylight to help me; and as I saw mysell near a kirk at the lang run, I e'en crap in to take up my night's quarters in the kirkyard."
Nowadays we have only an occasional "watch-tower" in an old kirkyard, or a rusted iron cage over a grass-grown grave to remind us of times when human hyænas prowled abroad after nightfall, and carried off their white, cold prey to be chaffered for by surgeons for the dissecting-rooms. But Dandy Jim's day was the day of Burke and Hare, of Dr.
Ay, but Hendry was straucht in thae days by what he is noo, an' Jamie wasna born. Twa' an' twenty years come the back end o' the year, an' it wasna thocht 'at I could live through the winter. 'Ye'll no last mair than anither month, Jess, was what my sister Bell said, when she came to see me, and yet here I am aye sittin' at my window, an' Bell's been i' the kirkyard this dozen years.
How lang Steenie lay there, he could not tell; but when he came to himsell, he was lying in the auld kirkyard of Redgauntlet parochine just at the door of the family aisle, and the scutcheon of the auld knight, Sir Robert, hanging over his head. There was a deep morning fog on grass and gravestane around him, and his horse was feeding quietly beside the minister's twa cows.
The quick championship of the boy was engaged for the gallant dog, and Geordie's eyes sparkled at the prospect of dark adventure. Bobby was on the floor listening, ears and eyes, brambly muzzle and feathered tail alert. He listened with his whole, small, excited body, and hung on the answer to the momentous question. "Is there no' a way to smuggle the bit dog into the kirkyard?"
The region round about furnished an unfailing supply of "puir orphan an' faderless boys" who were as light-hearted and irresponsible as Bobby. Hundreds of the Heriot laddies were out in the noon recess, playing cricket and leap-frog, when Bobby chased that unlucky cat over the kirkyard wall.
From the windows children looked down upon the quiet group and, without in the least knowing why they wanted to be there, too, the tenement bairns began to drop into the kirkyard. Almost at once it rained a quick, bright, dashing shower that sent them all flying and laughing up to the shelter of the portico to the new kirk.
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