I MEET JOCK McGILP AND HIS MATE McNEILAGE AT THE TURF INN, AND LEARN WHAT HAS BECOME OF THE WEAN IN THE TARTAN SHAWL.
We were at common work enough, Dan and me, in the Blair Mhor when the night clouds were banking behind the Blackhill to swoop down on the fast flying winter afternoon. Indeed, it was a matter of a braxy ewe, and the poor beast lay at the hedge-side and the blood clotting at her throat, for Dan had bled her, and the briars o' many a brake trailed behind her.
"Braxy and oatmeal, Hamish," says he, "there's many a lusty lad reared on worse; but we'll be hivin' tatties and herrin' for a change, and plenty o' sour milk tae slocken the drouth o' it."
And as he stooped to tie the ewe's clits together to make her a handier load, I looked round me at the cold bare trees, asleep till the spring would waken them with sap. The hills were bleak and barren, the rocks harsh and cold with no warm crotal on them, and just the reek from the houses rising into the frosty sky.
The night was just down on us, when I heard the lilt o' a whistle, clear as a whaup's, and with a great melody. To us there came whistling a kilted lad, his knees red as collops, for he had waded the burn, and the cheeks o' him glowing like wild roses.
"Ah-ha, Neil Veg," cries Dan, for he made a work wi' weans always, "is it stravagin' after the lassies ye are this bonny nicht?"
"Indeed no, it iss not that; it's yourself I'll be after," shrilled the lad, wi' a burning face.
"And what for will ye be after me, Neil Veg?"
"I will be tellin' you by yourself alone, for my father will be sayin' to me, 'Did you find him, and him alone? '"
At that Dan took him a step aside, with a wink to me not to be minding, and the lad delivered his message in Gaelic and sped away, and his clear whistle came back to us.
"A brave lad, Hamish," says Dan; "he'll have listened to a' the ghost and bogle and bawkin stories since he could creep, and yet he'll whistle himsel' safe ower the hill and be too proud tae run, an' I'm thinkin' every muircock that craws, and every whaup that cries, out on the peat-hags, will be a bogle in his childish mind."
"There's truth in that," said I, "and I wish I could be hearin' the stories, for you have not the way o' telling them. Ye will not be believing them."