[PDF Download] Leadership: all you need to know 2nd edition david pendleton full chapter pdf
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://textbookfull.com/product/leadership-all-you-need-to-know-2nd-edition-david-pe ndleton/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant download maybe you interests ...
All You Need to Know About the Music Business Eleventh Edition Donald S Passman
The Model Thinker What You Need to Know to Make Data Work for You Scott E. Page
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-model-thinker-what-you-needto-know-to-make-data-work-for-you-scott-e-page/ Cockpit Confidential: Everything You Need to Know about Air Travel: Guestions, Answers, and Reflections 2nd Edition Patrick Smith
The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made.
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London
Foreword by Sir Rod Eddington: Great Leadership Matters
Great leadership matters—from the front line of any organisation to the CEO’s office. It is the most important competitive advantage that any company can have. This is as true for organisations of all types—in politics, sport, government and business.
David Pendleton and Adrian Furnham have spent most of their lives understanding what makes leaders tick, and how to make them better at their critical leadership tasks. They have matched their academic knowledge of leadership with a comprehensive practitioners’ view of what does and doesn’t work in the business world. I’ve seen their passion for this subject up close for 25 years. In Asia, Europe and Australia, across a number of companies. And across cultures—great leadership has more common denominators than differences as we move from place to place. Their collective wisdom has been distilled into this book Leadership: All You Need to Know. It combines their collective insights with numerous practical examples down through the centuries and across the disciplines.
Both authors have had considerable success as advisors to major companies because they combine the tough messages that come in honest feedbacks with constructive ideas on how to improve and grow as leaders. Understanding your own strengths and weaknesses as a leader is the first step on the journey to growth.
‘Are leaders born or made?’ is a question often asked. Whatever you might think it is clear all of us must aspire to be the best we can be at our
vi Foreword by Sir Rod Eddington: Great Leadership Matters
chosen leadership tasks. We all have a lot to learn and the learning process never finishes.
So keep this book at your elbow. The ideas it brings to life are profoundly useful. And it’s an enjoyable read along the way.
Sir Rod Eddington is currently Chairman of J P Morgan Australia and New Zealand. Formerly, he ran Cathay Pacific Airways, Ansett Australia and British Airways. He received a Knighthood in 2005 for services to the aviation industry.
Rod Eddington
Melbourne, Australia
Preface to the Second Edition
There is little orthodoxy in the field of leadership. Richard Pascale at Oxford University created, initially for a joke but with serious content and consequences, a map of the published literature on leadership and management from 1950 to 2000. Having the appearance of a geological cross-section of a hillside, the map charted the rise and fall of ideas as reflected in the business and management journals during this 50-year period. It illustrated three patterns clearly. First, that there has been an explosion of interest in these subjects since the 1980s (ten years before the internet) and that the internet created a second growth spurt. Second, that ideas come and go. They make an impact for a while, spawn a flurry of research activity and then disappear from the journals. They may linger in practice but not in the academic world. Third, that there has been no game-changing new idea that has swept all before it. In science, a new paradigm can change a field of study totally as when Einstein revolutionised physics in the early twentieth century. Nothing like that has happened to the study of leadership. The challenge is, therefore, to keep up with a constantly moving target. Pascale called his map ‘Business Fads 1950–2000’.
In the first edition of this book, Adrian and I tried to focus on what is key. We dared to describe it as all you need to know because the essential elements are, in our view, few. Yet there is a wealth of new ideas and research constantly emerging in the field of leadership. We too are
continuously developing our own ideas and the Primary Colours approach to leadership is maturing and growing. This book aims to keep track of the key new developments and to expand, update and refocus as required. Thus, some chapters have been significantly expanded (e.g., chapter 1) and others have received minimal additions (e.g., chapters 3 and 7). Some have been refocused (e.g., chapter 4) and others are new (chapters 8 and 9).
Significantly, since the first edition, our emphasis on teams leading rather than individuals has emerged as a new emphasis in the research on leadership: leadership in the plural. We would be proud if we could claim that we caused this new wave to appear but we did not. The zeitgeist created the wave and we, like good surfers, spotted it and caught it early. Nevertheless, we are pleased to witness its emergence and believe it is likely to be more than a fad since it is a response to the world’s increasing complexity and the changed expectations of smart people at work. These contextual effects are unlikely to change. This is explained in chapter 1’s new sections.
It is our hope that the new edition continues to prove to be helpful to leaders, those aspiring to lead, consultants and academics interested in leadership.
David Pendleton Adrian Furnham London, UK
Acknowledgements
Many friends, colleagues and clients have helped us develop these ideas in many different ways. We both studied together at Oxford in the late 1970s and were enormously helped and encouraged by our doctoral supervisors Michael Argyle and Jos Jaspars. Michael nagged us to complete our dissertations, made learning fun, structured our time and developed our skills in playing charades. Jos developed our understanding of theory and statistics. Both of them believed in us.
Adrian would like to express his gratitude and thanks to Professor Robert Hogan whose imagination, brilliance and generosity with ideas has always inspired him. Adrian would also like to thank his support team at home, Alison and Benedict, for forgiving him spending far too much time in the office scribbling.
For David, colleagues at Innogy (now npower) helped him develop the five leadership enablers (chapter 4): Jon Cowell, Tor Farquhar, Erin Bland and Alan Robinson. Colleagues at Edgecumbe Consulting have worked with the Primary Colours Model for years and several helped brainstorm the approach to chapter 10: Jon Cowell (again), Chris Marshall, Megan Joffe, Jo Beale and Claire Romaines. Colleagues at Oxford University’s Saïd Business School also commented on early drafts of the first edition: Kathryn Bishop, Alison McQuater and Professor Tim Morris.
Clients have been helpful, and many are rapidly becoming friends, specifically John Rishton (formerly CEO of Ahold in Amsterdam and of
Acknowledgements
Rolls-Royce in the UK). From Ahold: Larry Benjamin, Klaas Miedema and Hans Hijne. From ICA in Stockholm: Åsa Gabriel and Kenneth Hagsten. These busy executives gave their time willingly to read and critique early drafts and went way beyond what was reasonable to be helpful. They commissioned, co-designed and participated in courses based on these ideas and pushed for the book to be written. All have now (2016) moved on from these positions but their legacies continue here and elsewhere.
Friends have also pitched in. Sir Rod Eddington is an outstanding leader and has encouraged Adrian and I professionally and personally for over 20 years. Professor Alastair Scotland (formerly CEO of the National Clinical Assessment Service of the NHS), David Haslam (Former President of the Royal College of General Practitioners, Former President of the BMA and now National Professional Advisor with the Care Quality Commission) and Elisabeth Kutt (Taylor), Divisional Director of Bristol’s UBHT all read early drafts and provided invaluable feedback, guidance and a great deal of encouragement. Peter Derbyshire gave many thoughtful comments and engaged in substantive debate about the issues.
Finally, David acknowledges the help, support and love of his wife and colleague Jenny Pendleton (King). She is the perfect role model for how to challenge and support simultaneously. She has pushed me to be clearer, more articulate and more disciplined in producing this volume. Her comments have ranged from structure and content to punctuation and grammar. Her confidence in me is limitless and her professionalism exemplary.
Fig. 1.3
Fig. 2.1
Fig. 2.2
Fig. 2.3
Fig. 2.4
Fig.
Fig. 4.1
Fig. 5.1
Fig. 5.2
Fig. 5.3
Fig. 5.4
Fig. 5.5
Fig. 6.1
Fig. 6.2
Fig. 6.3
Fig. 6.4
List of Figures
Fig. 8.1 The four humours according to Galen (AD 200) and two modern personality dimensions
Fig. 8.2 Hogan and Kaiser’s model of the impact of leader personality on organisation performance
Fig. 9.1 Challenge and support are best regarded as orthogonal dimensions
171
181
205
Table
Table
Table
Table
List of Tables
Table 8.3 The ten previous studies
Table 9.1 The DSM IV and the HDS
Table 9.2 The dark-side traits at work
Table 9.3 Dotlich and Cairo’s (2003) advice
Introduction
Leaders and leadership fascinate us. This is unsurprising given the current state of our world, the news headlines and the continuing uncertainties. As we write this introduction to the second edition of our book, we are coming to the end of a financial crisis but it is by no means over, the Middle East is still experiencing turmoil and threatens to spill over, there is political controversy engulfing leaders in Europe, the United States, Africa and elsewhere and we are coming to terms with disruptive technology that seems to be changing many of the assumptions we make about our lives and our futures. Leaders and leadership are in our media and on our minds every day of the year.
Consider the global nature of change. We are writing in 2016 but we could have been writing in similar circumstances at almost any time over the last 100 years. Consider the second half of the twentieth century and beginning of the twenty-first. In the 1960s many Soviet bloc countries struck out for more liberal treatment only to be crushed by the then Soviet Union. In the 1970s there had been major problems with inflation in many Western nations. In the 1980s many Latin American countries defaulted on their debt and there was a savings and loan (building society) crisis in the USA, where over 700 such institutions went out of business. The Vietnam War lasted from 1955 to 1975 but was most seriously escalated through the 1960s. It altered public consciousness as TV brought the war, for the first time, into the living rooms of the USA
where, some assert, the war was lost. TV had military consequences. In the twenty-first century there has been turmoil in Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and continuing tensions in Israel while relations with Iran seem to be changing and the old order in the Middle East seems to be re-forming.
New technologies over the last 150 years have informed the world about the changes happening around the globe in new ways that bring the change increasingly closer and deeper into the consciousness of more people. In the second half of the twenty-first century, computers became more widespread and with them came the technology which brought us to the brink of changing the world for ever—the internet. Indeed, many believe that the awareness of the public in the Middle East was so affected by what they saw on the internet and the world’s global media that they finally demanded change from the old and authoritarian regimes in the uprisings of 2011, much as billboard advertising influenced race riots in Watts in Los Angeles in the 1960s.
Earlier, in the 1950s, the Korean War lasted from 1950 to 1953, there was the Suez Crisis (1956) and the potentially disruptive technology of the time was the spin-offs from the start of the space race (Sputnik 1 was launched in 1957). In the late 1920s and early 1930s there was the Wall Street Crash and the advent of television to change our lives. In the 1890s we were introduced to radio and the possibility of instant coverage of the world’s major events.
During the last 100 years there have been two world wars (1914–18 and 1939–45) and conflicts around the globe which have given birth to international institutions designed to provide a forum for international leadership and diplomacy. We have seen the inception and demise of the League of Nations and the emergence of the United Nations. In the 1940s the IMF and World Bank were created in response to the Great Depression and the Second World War as a way to promote monetary cooperation, financial stability and economic growth for all countries. We have seen Communism rise in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and we have seen it fall, as symbolised by the toppling of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
We have seen global economic changes. Arguably the nineteenth century belonged to Britain as the British Empire turned the world’s atlases pink. The twentieth century belonged to the USA and Japan as they
became the dominant economies across the globe. Already the twentyfirst century seems to belong to China with its double-digit growth sustained for many years—it had already overtaken Japan to become the world’s second biggest economy by 2011. It is believed that China will overtake the USA economically in the next decade or so. The ubiquity of change makes it unsurprising that our fascination with leaders and leadership continues unabated.
In this book we make passing mention of leadership in other realms, but we are principally concerned with the leadership of organisations in the public and private sectors. We now know a great deal about effective and ineffective leadership by observing the events around us, but we know a great deal more from the last 100 years of systematic research on the topic. In this book, we describe much of this research and locate the firm and generaliseable findings we can all use as a basis on which to act.
Our definition of leadership is this: to create the conditions for people to thrive, individually and collectively, and achieve significant goals. Thus, gardening may be a better analogy than sports or fighting a war. Gardeners have to understand the circumstances in which they are working and work with the elements and the plants to create the conditions for sustainable growth. The difference of course is that, in organisations, leaders are not dealing with plants but with people who increasingly demand a say in how decisions are made!
We will not avoid controversy but we will seek to resolve it, where possible, by reference to sound evidence rather than conjecture. In chapter 1, we describe the history of research on leadership, focusing largely on the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In this second edition, the research record has been updated and emerging trends in the twenty-first century have been identified. In chapter 2, we show that leadership makes a difference to the performance of organisations. We briefly describe the evidence against this assertion before setting out the overwhelming evidence for it and underlining a number of themes around effective leadership which we will incorporate later in models and suggestions of our own.
In chapter 3 we describe Pendleton’s Primary Colours Model of Leadership: a simple means of describing the domains in which leaders must operate and the tasks they need to achieve. We offer the model as a map of the territory of leadership, showing the interrelations between the
three domains. In chapter 4, we concentrate on the task of leading that lies at the heart of the Primary Colours Model: of balancing and coordinating the contributions required of effective leadership and we describe five enablers that make the task more likely to succeed.
Chapter 5 makes the case that it is extremely diffi cult, if not impossible, for any individual to be a complete leader. Th e reasons are several fold but their implications are important. For years, learning and development specialists in organisations have proceeded on the assumption that all limitations can be turned into strengths. We will suggest otherwise and recommend a diff erent way of thinking about the problem. We will suggest that there may need to be work- around solutions as well as developmental actions to work on any signifi cant limitation. In chapter 6 , we consider the implications for teams. We will suggest that, while complete individual leaders may be hard to fi nd, teams hold the possibility of fi nding complementary leaders who demonstrate complete leadership together. We will describe several examples of such leaders who have created eff ective leadership teams and who have achieved a great deal thereby. We will assert that ‘we don’t need another hero’: a leader who tries to be complete alone. Th ose who try to be so are probably condemned to a career of mediocre leadership.
In this second edition, we have added a new chapter. Chapter 9 is a new chapter on leaders who fail and derail. It started as a section in chapter 8 in the first edition but is now much expanded and developed to shed more light on this remarkably common occurrence with a section devoted to the subject of resilience: how it is to be understood and developed. Naturally, there are formal propositions about leadership that we also need to address. The first of these is that effective leadership is all a matter of intelligence: that leaders are brighter than most people and the brightest leaders have the greatest success. This is the theme of chapter 7 and the results may give rise to some surprise, since the effect of intelligence on leadership effectiveness is much weaker than most of us might imagine. Similarly, there is the effect of personality on leadership. Intuitively most of us would expect the effect of personality on leadership will be less than that of intelligence, but the reverse is true, as we shall see in chap ter 8 which also contains a new section on introverted leaders.
We will occasionally refer to the oldest question of all: are leaders born or made? The answer is unequivocal: both, for reasons we will describe. In the final chapter 10, we set out a programme of action in the form of a story describing a fictitious character facing the challenges of leadership. It is intended to draw out the key lessons from the rest of the book. This book is written for leaders in all walks of life, though we hope that we will also find readers among those who advise and consult, train and develop, educate and coach. It is also for those who have to evaluate the quality of leadership in an organisation: executives, non-executives and investors. Different types of reader are likely to want to access the book differently. Leaders, non-executives and investors who want to consider our approach to leadership and its implications, might only want to read chapters 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10 since these are the most practical and original. Those who educate and coach will also need to understand the background provided in chapters 1 and 2 in order to compare our approach with others. Those with a more psychological orientation will need to look at chapters 7, 8, and 9 in addition.
We are attempting to produce a book that is intellectually satisfying but not essentially academic. Accordingly, it has been fully referenced. We want to point out the reasons why a particular approach to leadership is to be followed, not merely to provide practical suggestions. The original working title for the book was We Don’t Need Another Hero in order to reflect one of the key concepts delineated in it, but our publisher persuaded us to give it its present title to reflect our intention to be evidence based, conceptually coherent and entirely practical.
The evidence we cite throughout the book will draw most heavily on published research, favouring the larger studies and meta-analyses of other published works. This approach makes the best use of the most data. In the attempt to be conceptually coherent, we will suggest models that are simple but not simplistic. In this way we will attempt to make our ideas easily memorable and the more robust for their basis in published evidence. Most of all we will attempt to draw out the practical implications of our suggestions so that our thoughts can make a difference if put into practice.
1
The History of Thinking about Leadership
Introduction
The topic of leadership is controversial. There are those who argue that leadership is greatly overvalued: that the success of organisations derives at least as much from serendipity as from strategy, vision or leadership. They argue that attempts to identify the characteristics of great leaders have proven to be inconsequential or contradictory and that generaliseable lessons about leadership are elusive. We believe that these arguments may have some validity but that they do not represent the overwhelming weight of research evidence; evidence that has become more convincing since the first edition of this volume.
Philosophers, historians, novelists and journalists have always been interested in what makes a great (and a failed) leader: what are their unique characteristics and strengths; allowable weakness and peculiar foibles; and what makes them fall from grace, get forgotten or get lionised for all time? Do special circumstances (crises) throw up certain types of leaders who are only suitable in that situation? Certainly the study of leaders, organisations, countries and empires seem to need frequent updates as yesterday’s heroes become today’s controversies and tomorrow’s embarrassments.
World history is littered with examples of leaders in a time of crisis who became a poor leader in a time of stability and vice versa. The history of organisations provides examples of business leaders who are victims of the Peter principle (promoted until their level of incompetence is reached). Thus, is succession planning for leaders really viable, given that circumstances change so often? Key to all these dilemmas is one of the oldest questions of all: are leaders born (with some genetic disposition) or are they made (by chance, learning or circumstance)?
After generations of research effort and observation, there is a lot we know about leadership. There is evidence to answer a great many questions such as what is leadership? Does leadership matter? How are leaders chosen? Who is likely to become a leader? Why do leaders fail? How do leaders build effective teams? And the like. This chapter will describe several attempts to study leadership over time and suggest an emerging story on the basis of which we can begin to understand leadership differently. It will also include a section on followers and followership: a theme that has come into sharper focus since the first edition of this volume.
Disciplinary Perspectives on Leadership
Leadership has always been studied through the lens of different approaches or disciplines. Each brings its own theories, models and jargon and each has a different way of conducting analyses and collects different data. The historian and biographer will approach leadership somewhat differently from the psychologist or psychiatrist, let alone the management writer. They seek out and interpret the data differently. They focus on different causes; offer different explanations. Even within a single discipline there are dramatic differences. This is not to assert the virtues of one over the others. Rather it is to point out the complexity of the topic and the different ways of making sense of leadership.
Consider the multiple ways in which psychologists from various sub-disciplines write and think about leadership. These approaches fall broadly into three categories concerning how leaders emerge, who they are and what they do.
1. How leaders emerge
a. The biographical approach. Neo-psychoanalysts have written about famous leaders like Luther King and Gandhi. There have also been fine essays on famous despots who often intrigue readers the most. Psychobiography is a psychological analysis of the conscious and unconscious forces that shape an individual life. Most leaders are complex figures. They often have phenomenal drive and persistence. They overcome adversity and rejection. The biographical approach is often focused on deceased leaders and it can offer new and insightful perspectives on their motives and drives. This is not to be confused with the autobiographical approach where leaders seek to influence how they will be appreciated and remembered: to determine their own place in history before others do it for them.
b. The educational or developmental approach. What creates a leader? What educational experiences, both formal and informal, shaped them? How, when and why did leaders develop their beliefs, skills, knowledge, motivation and drive? This also speaks to the question of training and developing leaders of the future. This approach is about the development of leaders and so frequently focuses on the talented or high-potential group. It addresses the question of what is trainable? Can people be taught to be good or better leaders, and if so, how? It seeks to define both the minimal and optimal preconditions for good leadership on which developmental activities can work to transform potential into fully realised leadership capability.
c. The environmental approach. We shape our environment and afterwards it shapes us, as Winston Churchill once said of the British Parliament. Leaders frequently send out witting and unwitting signals about how they want to be perceived by the decisions they implement about the design and function of the buildings they inhabit. Organisational cultures are frequently typified by such signals as the location of the CEO’s office, the differences in office size and furniture found there, the ease or difficulty of gaining access to the Executive suite and the like. Even the layout of the furniture influences behaviour in the office and conversations conducted across desks tend to be more formal than those in more comfortable
settings. Leaders create and modify physical environments with psychological and cultural consequences, creating physical analogues of their leadership style and approach.
2. Who leaders are
a. The personality approach. This is perhaps the best-known approach. Whilst some writers include ability and values under this heading, the majority focus on personality traits. They aim to discover those traits in highly successful leaders that explain their success. The best trait studies look at longitudinal data so that one can separate cause from correlation, but more typically, these studies are correlational and can merely infer causality. This approach has seen a significant revival since the 1980s due to the development of the so-called ‘Five Factor’ model of personality which has now shown highly significant correlations with both leadership emergence and effectiveness, as we shall see in subsequent chapters.
b. The clinical approach. Psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts have taken an interest in the abnormal, disordered side of leaders which sits alongside their skill and determination and frequently accounts for their drive. Many are known to have both acute and chronic disorders, which they often exploit for their own ends. The psychopath, the narcissist and the manic depressive leader are far from rare. By one definition of abnormal (i.e., the statistical definition) all leaders are abnormal since they are exceptional. The question for the clinical approach is how their problems helped and hindered them both in the journey to the top and their experience once there.
c. The evolutionary approach. It has been suggested that leaders tend to be taller, more handsome and fitter than the average person of their age and stage in life. Evolutionary psychologists looking at other animals and our own primitive past have noticed that leaders have always tended to be fit and strong; bright and ‘wily’; feared by adversaries; admired by followers. Some physical anthropologists have noted the shape of successful leaders. Whilst we can all think of short, tubby, bald exceptions to the rule, it is also apparent from our elected politicians and from the CEOs of top companies that they are often taller and more attractive than the average person of their
age. In US Presidential elections in the television age, for example, the taller candidate has usually won and the idea of a ‘commanding presence’ persists.
3. What leaders do
a. The cognitive approach. Cognition is about thinking and therefore involves perception, information processing, understanding, knowledge and sometimes creativity. One essential feature of leadership is decision-making. Cognitive psychologists are interested in all aspects of decision-making from decision-making under uncertainty to decision-making in groups. How do leaders typically make decisions: to hire or fire, buy or sell, advance or retreat? Do they consult others or make decisions alone; do they agonise or act impulsively? What sort of data do they seek before they decide? Perhaps most importantly, do leaders make better decisions than their followers and has high-quality decision-making contributed to their emergence as leaders?
b. The ideological approach. Sometimes called the moral approach, it looks at the influence that leaders have been able to wield predominantly through the power of their preaching and message. In history, some of the most enduring and powerful of leaders are those who have crusaded with simple but attractive moral goals. Many have not sought leadership itself but had it thrust upon them—and the question is how they did it. One of the best examples from the twentieth century was Martin Luther King, whose rhetoric was so powerful and whose message so straightforward and just that millions were persuaded to follow his teachings and his cause. King followed in the peaceful tradition of Gandhi several decades earlier—both died for their cause, but their impact has been legendary.
c. The social approach. No leader can succeed without followers. Leaders give the led a sense of identity and mission. He or she has to build and maintain morale in groups, which is an intensely social act. The social approach concentrates on inter-personal rather than intra-personal approaches to leadership, seeking to understand how social forces create and maintain, and in due course derail, leaders. In this tradition leaders’ abilities to influence and persuade are central and closely observed.
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
them presented his carbine at her—
“Off, mistress; blast my heart, if it were not for your pretty face, I would send an ounce of cold lead through you. What the devil— haven’t we spared your father’s life, and you would have us connive at the escape of a murderer, to the risk of our own necks!”
“Do not distress yourself about me, my sweet girl,” cried Graham —“farewell once more!”
And she turned back weeping, while the troopers held their way towards the western outlet of the valley.
C III.
Mary was too generous to be happy in the safety of her father, when that was bought with the life of his brave deliverer. When Graham was taken away, she felt a pang as if he had been led to execution. Instead, therefore, of indulging in selfish congratulation, her whole soul was taken up in the romantic and apparently hopeless scheme of extricating him from his danger. There was not a moment to lose; and she asked her father if he could think of any way in which a rescue might be attempted.
“Mary, my dear, I know of none,” was his answer. “We live far from any house, and before assistance could be procured, they would be miles beyond our reach.”
“Yes, father, there is a chance,” said she, with impatience. “Gallop over to Allister Wilson’s on the other side of the hills. He is a strong and determined man, and, as well as some of his near neighbours, is accustomed to contest. You know he fought desperately at Drumclog; and though he blamed you for not joining the cause, he will not be loth to assist in this bitter extremity.”
Allan, at these words, started up as if awakened from a reverie. “That will do, my dear bairn. I never thought of it; but your understanding is quicker than mine. I shall get out the horse; follow me on foot, as hard as you can.”
This was the work of a minute. The horse was brought from the stable, and Allan lashed him to his full speed across the moor. Most fortunately he arrived at Allister’s house as the latter was on the point of leaving it. He carried a musket over his shoulder, and a huge claymore hung down from a belt girded round his loins.
“You have just come in time,” said this stern son of the Covenant, after Allan had briefly related to him what had happened. “I am on my way to hear that precious saint, Mr Hervey, hold forth. You see I am armed to defend myself against temporal foes, and so are many others of my friends and brethren in God, who will be present on that blessed occasion. Come away, Allan Hamilton, you are one of the timid and faint-hearted flock of Jacob, but we will aid you as you
wish, and peradventure save the young man who has done you such a good turn.”
They went on swiftly to a retired spot at the distance of half a mile; it was a small glen nearly surrounded with rocks. There they beheld the Reverend Mr Hervey standing upon a mound of earth, and preaching to a congregation, the greater part of the males of which were armed with muskets, swords, or pikes; they formed, as it were, the outworks of the assembly,—the women, old men, and children being placed in the centre. These were a few of the devoted Christians who, from the rocks and caves of their native land, sent up their fearless voices to heaven—who, disowning the spiritual authority of a tyrannic government, thought it nowise unbecoming or treasonable to oppose the strong arm of lawless power with its own weapons; and who finally triumphed in the glorious contest, establishing that pure religion, for which posterity has proved, alas, too ungrateful!
In the pressing urgency of the case, Allister did not scruple to go up to the minister, in the midst of his discourse. Such interruptions indeed were common in these distracted times, when it was necessary to skulk from place to place, and perform divine worship as if it was an act of treason against the state. Mr Hervey made known to his flock in a few words what had been communicated to him, taking care to applaud highly the scheme proposed by Wilson. There was no time to be lost, and under the guidance of Allister the whole of the assemblage hurried to a gorge of the mountains through which the troopers must necessarily pass. As the route of the latter was circuitous, time was allowed to this sagacious leader to arrange his forces. This he did by placing all the armed men—about twentyfive in number—in two lines across the pass. Those who were not armed, together with the women and children, were sent to the rear. When, therefore, the soldiers came up, they found to their surprise a formidable body ready to dispute the passage.
“What means this interruption?” said Ross, who acted the part of spokesman to the rest. Whereupon Mr Hervey advanced in front —“Release,” said he, “that young man whom ye have in bonds.”
“Release him!” replied Ross. “Would you have us release a murderer? Are you aware that he has shot his officer?”
“I am aware of it,” Mr Hervey answered, “and I blame him not for the deed. Stand forth, Allan Hamilton, and say if that is the soldier who saved your life; and you, Mary Hamilton, stand forth likewise.”
Both, to the astonishment of the soldiers, came in front of the crowd. “That,” said Allan, “is the man, and may God bless him for his humanity.”—“It is the same,” cried his daughter; “I saw him with these eyes shoot the cruel Clobberton. On my knees I begged him to sue for mercy, and his kind heart had pity upon me, and saved my father.”
“Soldiers,” said Mr Hervey, “I have nothing more to say to you. That young man has slain your captain, but he has done no murder. His deed was justifiable: yea, it was praiseworthy, in so far as it saved an upright man, and rid the earth of a cruel persecutor. Deliver him up, and go away in peace, or peradventure ye may fare ill among these armed men who stand before you.”
The troopers consulted together for a short time, till, seeing that resistance would be utter madness against such odds, they reluctantly let go their prisoner. The first person who came up to him was Mary Hamilton. She loosened the cords that tied him, and presented him with conscious pride to those of her own sex who were assembled round.
“Good bye, Graham,” cried Ross, with a sneer;—“you have bit us once, but it will puzzle you to do so again. We shall soon ‘harry’ you and your puritanical friends from your strongholds. An ell of strong hemp is in readiness for you at the Grassmarket of Edinburgh. Take my defiance for a knave, as you are,” added he, with an imprecation.
He had scarcely pronounced the last sentence when Graham unsheathed the weapon which hung at his side, sprang from the middle of the crowd, and stood before his defier. “Ross, you have challenged me, and you shall abide it—draw!” Here there was an instantaneous movement among the Covenanters, who rushed in between the two fierce soldiers, who stood with their naked weapons, their eyes glancing fire at each other. Mary Hamilton screamed aloud with terror, and cries of “separate them!” were heard from all the women. Mr Hervey came forward and entreated them to put up their swords, and he was seconded by most of the old men; but all entreaties were in vain. They stood fronting each other, and only waiting for free ground to commence their desperate game.
“Let me alone,” said Graham, furiously, to some who were attempting to draw him back; “am I to be bearded to my teeth by that swaggering ruffian?”
“Come on, my sweet cock of the Covenant,” cries Ross, with the most insulting derision, “you or any one of your canting crew—or a dozen of you, one after the other.”
“Let Graham go,” was heard from the deep stern voice of Allister Wilson; “let him go, or I will meet that man with my own weapon. Mr Hervey, your advice is dear to us all, and well do we know that the blood of God’s creatures must not be shed in vain; but has not that man of blood openly defied us, and shall we hinder our champion from going forward to meet him? No; let them join in combat and try which is the better cause. If the challenger overcomes, we shall do him no harm, but let him depart in peace: if he be overcome, let him rue the consequences of his insolence.”
This proposition, though violently opposed by the women and the aged part of the crowd, met the entire approbation of the young men. Each felt himself personally insulted, and allowed, for a time, the turbulent passions of his nature to get the better of every milder feeling. A space of ground was immediately cleared for the combat, the friends of Ross being allowed to arrange matters as they thought fit. They went about it with a coolness and precision which showed that to them this sort of pastime was nothing new. “All is right—fall on,” was their cry, and in a moment the combatants met in the area. The three troopers looked on with characteristic sang froid, but it was otherwise with the rest of the bystanders, who gazed upon the scene with the most intense interest. Some of the females turned away their eyes from it, and among them Mary Hamilton, who almost sank to the earth, and was with difficulty supported by her father.
The combat was desperate, for the men were of powerful strength, and of tried courage and skill in their weapons. The blows were parried for some time on both sides with consummate address, and neither could be said to have the advantage. At length, after contending fiercely, Ross exhibited signs of exhaustion—neither guarding himself nor assaulting his opponent so vigorously as at first. Graham, on noticing this, redoubled his efforts. He acted now wholly on the offensive, sending blow upon blow with the rapidity of
lightning. His last and most desperate stroke was made at the head of his enemy. The sword of the latter, which was held up in a masterly manner to receive it, was beat down by Graham’s weapon, which descended forcibly upon his helmet. The blow proved decisive, and Ross fell senseless upon the ground. His conqueror immediately wrested the weapon from him, while a shout was set up by the crowd in token of victory. The troopers looked mortified at this result of the duel, which was by them evidently unexpected. Their first care was to raise up their fellow comrade. On examination, no wound was perceived upon his head. His helmet had been penetrated by the sword, which, however, did not go further. His own weapon had contributed to deaden the blow, by partially arresting that of Graham in its furious descent. It was this only which saved his life. In a few minutes he so far recovered as to get up and look around him. The first object which struck him was his opponent standing in the ring wiping his forehead.
“Well, Ross,” said one of his companions, “I always took you to be the best swordsman in the regiment; but I think you have met your match.”
“My match? confound me!” returned the vanquished man, “I thought I would have made minced meat of him. There, for three years, have I had the character of being one of the best men in the army at my weapon, and here is all this good name taken out of me in a trice. How mortifying—and to lose my good sword too!”
“Here is your sword, Ross, and keep it,” said Graham. “You have behaved like a brave man; and I honour such a fellow, whether he be my friend or foe. Only don’t go on with your insolent bragging—that is all the advice I have to give you; nor call any man a knave till you have good proof that he is so.”
“Well, well, Graham,” answered the other, “I retract what I said; I have a better opinion of you than I had ten minutes ago. Take care of old Dalzell—his “lambs” will be after you, and you had better keep out of the way. Take this advice in return for my weapon which you have given me back. It would, after all, be a pity to tuck up such a pretty fellow as you are; although I would care very little to see your long-faced acquaintances there dangling by their necks. Give us your hand for old fellowship, and shift your quarters as soon as you choose. Good bye.” So saying, he and his three comrades departed.
After these doings, it was considered imprudent for the principal actors to remain longer in this quarter. Mr Hervey retired about twenty miles to the northward, in company with Allan Hamilton and his daughter, and Allister Wilson. Graham went by a circuitous route to Argyleshire, where he secreted himself so judiciously, that though the agents of government got information of his being in that country, they could never manage to lay hand upon him. These steps were prudent in all parties; for the very day after the rescue, a strong body of dragoons was sent to the Lowthers, to apprehend the above named persons. They behaved with great cruelty, burning the cottages of numbers of the inhabitants, and destroying their cattle. They searched Allan Hamilton’s house, took from it everything that could be easily carried away, and such of his cattle as were found on the premises. Among other things, they carried off the body of the sanguinary Clobberton, which they found on the spot where it had been left, and interred it in Lanark churchyard, with military honours. None of the individuals, however, whom they sought for were found.
For a short time after this, the persecution raged with great violence in the south of Lanarkshire; but happier days were beginning to dawn; and the arrival of King William, and the dethronement of the bigoted James, put an end to such scenes of cruelty. When these events occurred, the persecuted came forth from their hiding-places. Mr Hervey, among others, returned to the Lowthers, and enjoyed many happy days in this seat of his ministry and trials. Allan and his daughter were among the first to make their appearance. Their house soon recovered its former comfort; and in the course of time every worldly concern went well with them. Mary, however, for a month or more after their return, did not feel entirely satisfied. She was duller than was her wont, and neither she nor her father could give any explanation why it should be so. At this time a tall young man paid them a visit, and, strange to say, she became perfectly happy. This visitor was no other than the wild fighting fellow Graham,—now perfectly reformed from his former evil courses, by separation from his profligate companions, and by the better company and principles with which his late troubles had brought him acquainted.
A few words more will end our story. This bold trooper and the beautiful daughter of Allan Hamilton were seen five weeks thereafter going to church as man and wife. It was allowed that they were the handsomest couple ever seen in the Lowthers. Graham proved a kind husband; and it is hardly necessary to say that Mary was a most affectionate and exemplary wife. Allan Hamilton attained a happy old age, and saw his grandchildren ripening into fair promise around him. His daughter, many years after his death, used to repeat to them the story of his danger and escape, which we have here imperfectly related. The tale is not fictitious. It is handed down in tradition over the upper and middle wards of Lanarkshire, and with a consistency which leaves no doubt of its truth.
THE POOR SCHOLAR.
B P W .
The vernal weather, that had come so early in the year as to induce a fear that it would not be lasting, seemed, contrary to that foreboding of change, to become every day more mild and genial, and the spirit of beauty, that had at first ventured out over the bosom of the earth with timid footsteps, was now blending itself more boldly with the deep verdure of the ground, and the life of the budding trees. Something in the air, and in the great wide blue bending arch of the unclouded sky, called upon the heart to come forth from the seclusion of parlour or study, and partake of the cheerfulness of nature.
We had made some short excursions together up the lonely glens, and over the moors, and also through the more thickly inhabited field-farms of his parish, and now the old minister proposed that we should pay a visit to a solitary hut near the head of a dell, which, although not very remote from the manse, we had not yet seen; and I was anxious that we should do so, as, from his conversation, I understood that we should see there a family—if so a widow and her one son could be called—that would repay us by the interest we could not fail to feel in their character, for the time and toil spent on reaching their secluded and guarded dwelling.
“The poor widow woman,” said the minister, “who lives in the hut called Braehead, has as noble a soul as ever tenanted a human bosom. One earthly hope alone has she now—but I fear it never will be fulfilled. She is the widow of a common cottar, who lived and died in the hut which she and her son now inhabit. Her husband was a man of little education, but intelligent, even ingenious, simple,
laborious, and pious. His duties lay all within a narrow circle, and his temptations, it may be said, were few. Such as they were, he discharged the one and withstood the other. Nor is there any reason to think that, had they both been greater, he would have been found wanting. He was contented with meal and water all his days, and so fond of work that he seemed to love the summer chiefly for the length of its labouring days. He had a slight genius for mechanics; and during the long winter evenings he made many articles of curious workmanship, the sale of which added a little to the earnings of his severer toil. The same love of industry excited him from morning to night; but he had also stronger, tenderer, and dearer motives; for if his wife and their one pretty boy should outlive him, he hoped that, though left poor, they would not be left in penury, but enabled to lead, without any additional hardships, the usual life, at least, of the widow and the orphans of honest hardworking men. Few thought much about Abraham Blane while he lived, except that he was an industrious and blameless man; but, on his death, it was felt that there had been something far more valuable in his character; and now, I myself, who knew him well, was pleasingly surprised to know that he had left his widow and boy a small independence. Then the memory of his long summer days, and long winter nights, all ceaselessly employed in some kind of manual labour, dignified the lowly and steadfast virtue of the unpretending and conscientious man.
“The widow of this humble-hearted and simple-minded man, whom we shall this forenoon visit, you will remember, perhaps,— although then neither she nor her husband were much known in the parish,—as the wife of the basket-maker. Her father had been a clergyman—but his stipend was one of the smallest in Scotland, and he died in extreme poverty. This, his only daughter, who had many fine feelings and deep thoughts in her young innocent and simple heart, was forced to become a menial servant in a farmhouse. There, subduing her heart to her situation, she married that inoffensive and good man; and all her life has been—maid, wife, and widow—the humblest among the humble. But you shall soon have an opportunity of seeing, what sense, what feeling, what knowledge, and what piety, may all live together, without their owner suspecting them, in the soul of the lonely widow of a Scottish cottar; for except that she is
pious, she thinks not that she possesses any other treasure; and even her piety she regards, like a true Christian, as a gift bestowed.
“But well worthy of esteem, and, to speak in the language of this world’s fancies, of admiration, as you will think this poor solitary widow, perhaps you will think such feelings bestowed even more deservedly on her only son. He is now a boy only of sixteen years of age, but in my limited experience of life, never knew I such another. From his veriest infancy he showed a singular capacity for learning; at seven years of age he could read, write, and was even an arithmetician. He seized upon books with the same avidity with which children in general seize upon playthings. He soon caught glimmerings of the meaning even of other languages; and, before he was ten years old, there were in his mind clear dawnings of the scholar, and indications not to be doubted of genius and intellectual power. His father was dead—but his mother, who was no common woman, however common her lot, saw with pure delight, and with strong maternal pride, that God had given her an extraordinary child to bless her solitary hut. She vowed to dedicate him to the ministry, and that all her husband had left should be spent upon him, to the last farthing, to qualify him to be a preacher of God’s Word. Such ambition, if sometimes misplaced, is almost always necessarily honourable. Here it was justified by the excelling talents of the boy— by his zeal for knowledge, which was like a fever in his blood—and by a childish piety, of which the simple, and eloquent, and beautiful expression has more than once made me shed tears. But let us leave the manse, and walk to Braehead. The sunshine is precious at this early season; let us enjoy it while it smiles!”
We crossed a few fields—a few coppice woods—an extensive sheeppasture, and then found ourselves on the edge of a moorland. Keeping the shelving heather ridge of hills above us, we gently descended into a narrow rushy glen, without anything that could be called a stream, but here and there crossed and intersected by various runlets. Soon all cultivation ceased, and no houses were to be seen. Had the glen been a long one, it would have seemed desolate, but on turning round a little green mount that ran almost across it, we saw at once an end to our walk, and one hut, with a peatstack close to it, and one or two elder, or, as we call them in Scotland, bourtrie bushes, at the low gable-end. A little smoke seemed to tinge
the air over the roof uncertainly—but except in that, there was nothing to tell that the hut was inhabited. A few sheep lying near it, and a single cow of the small hill-breed, seemed to appertain to the hut, and a circular wall behind it apparently enclosed the garden. We sat down together on one of those large mossy stones that often lie among the smooth green pastoral hills, like the relics of some building utterly decayed—and my venerable friend, whose solemn voice was indeed pleasant in this quiet solitude, continued the simple history of the poor scholar.
“At school he soon outstripped all the other boys, but no desire of superiority over his companions seemed to actuate him—it was the pure native love of knowledge. Gentle as a lamb, but happy as a lark, the very wildest of them all loved Isaac Blane. He procured a Hebrew Bible and a Greek Testament, both of which he taught himself to read. It was more than affecting—it was sublime and awful to see the solitary boy sitting by himself on the braes shedding tears over the mysteries of the Christian faith. His mother’s heart burned within her towards her son; and if it was pride, you will allow that it was pride of a divine origin. She appeared with him in the kirk every Sabbath, dressed not ostentatiously, but still in a way that showed she intended him not for a life of manual labour. Perhaps, at first, some half thought that she was too proud of him; but that was a suggestion not to be cherished, for all acknowledged that he was sure to prove an honour to the parish in which he was born. She often brought him to the manse, and earth did not contain a happier creature than she, when her boy answered all my questions, and modestly made his own simple, yet wise remarks on the sacred subjects gradually unfolding before his understanding and his heart.
“Before he was twelve years of age he went to college; and his mother accompanied him to pass the winter in the city. Two small rooms she took near the cathedral; and while he was at the classes, or reading alone, she was not idle, but strove to make a small sum to help to defray their winter’s expenses. To her that retired cell was a heaven when she looked upon her pious and studious boy. His genius was soon conspicuous; for four winters he pursued his studies in the university, returning always in summer to this hut, the door of which during their absence was closed. He made many friends, and frequently during the three last summers, visitors came to pass a day
at Braehead, in a rank of life far above his own. But in Scotland, thank God, talent and learning, and genius and virtue, when found in the poorest hut, go not without their admiration and their reward. Young as he is, he has had pupils of his own—his mother’s little property has not been lessened at this hour by his education; and besides contributing to the support of her and himself, he has brought neater furniture into that lonely hut, and there has he a library, limited in the number, but rich in the choice of books, such as contain food for years of silent thought to the poor scholar—if years indeed are to be his on earth.”
We rose to proceed onwards to the hut, across one smooth level of greenest herbage, and up one intervening knowe, a little lower than the mount on which it stood. Why, thought I, has the old man always spoken of the poor scholar as if he had been speaking of one now dead? Can it be, from the hints he has dropped, that this youth, so richly endowed, is under the doom of death, and the fountain of all those clear and fresh-gushing thoughts about to be sealed? I asked, as we walked along, if Isaac Blane seemed marked out to be one of those sweet flowers “no sooner blown than blasted,” and who perish away like the creatures of a dream? The old man made answer that it was even so, that he had been unable to attend college last winter, and that it was to be feared he was now far advanced in a hopeless decline. “Simple is he still as a very child; but with a sublime sense of duty to God and man—of profound affection and humanity never to be appeased towards all the brethren of our race. Each month—each week—each day, has seemed visibly to bring him new stores of silent feeling and thought—and even now, boy as he is, he is fit for the ministry. But he has no hopes of living to that day—nor have I. The deep spirit of his piety is now blended with a sure prescience of an early death. Expect, therefore, to see him pale, emaciated, and sitting in the hut like a beautiful and blessed ghost.”
We entered the hut, but no one was in the room. The clock ticked solitarily, and on a table, beside a nearly extinguished peat fire, lay the open Bible, and a small volume, which, on lifting it up, I found to be a Greek Testament.
“They have gone out to walk, or to sit down for an hour in the warm sunshine,” said the old man. “Let us sit down and wait their return. It will not be long.” A long, low sigh was heard in the silence,
proceeding, as it seemed, from a small room adjoining that in which we were sitting, and of which the door was left half open. The minister looked into that room, and, after a long earnest gaze, stepped softly back to me again, with a solemn face, and taking me by the hand, whispered to me to come with him to that door, which he gently moved. On a low bed lay the poor scholar, dressed as he had been for the day, stretched out in a stillness too motionless and profound for sleep, and with his fixed face up to heaven. We saw that he was dead. His mother was kneeling, with her face on the bed, and covered with both her hands. Then she lifted up her eyes and said, “O merciful Redeemer, who wrought that miracle on the child of the widow of Nain, comfort me—comfort me, in this my sore distress. I know that my son is never to rise again until the great judgment day. But not the less do I bless Thy holy name, for Thou didst die to save us sinners.”
She arose from her knees, and, still blind to every other object, went up to his breast. “I thought thee lovelier, when alive, than any of the sons of the children of men, but that smile is beyond the power of a mother’s heart to sustain.” And, stooping down, she kissed his lips, and cheeks, and eyes, and forehead, with a hundred soft, streaming, and murmuring kisses, and then stood up in her solitary hut, alone and childless, with a long mortal sigh, in which all earthly feelings seemed breathed out, and all earthly ties broken. Her eyes wandered towards the door, and fixed themselves with a ghastly and unconscious gaze for a few moments on the gray locks and withered countenance of the holy old man, bent towards her with a pitying and benignant air, and stooped, too, in the posture of devotion. She soon recognised the best friend of her son, and leaving the bed on which his body lay, she came out into the room, and said, “You have come to me at a time when your presence was sorely needed. Had you been here but a few minutes sooner you would have seen my Isaac die!”
Unconsciously we were all seated; and the widow, turning fervently to her venerated friend, said, “He was reading the Bible—he felt faint—and said feebly, ‘Mother, attend me to my bed, and when I lie down, put your arm over my breast and kiss me.’ I did just as he told me; and, on wiping away a tear or two vainly shed by me on my dear boy’s face, I saw that his eyes, though open, moved not, and that
the lids were fixed. He had gone to another world. See—sir! there is the Bible lying open at the place he was reading—God preserve my soul from repining!—only a few, few minutes ago.”
The minister took the Bible on his knees, and laying his right hand, without selection, on part of one of the pages that lay open, he read aloud the following verses:—
“Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
“Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”
The mother’s heart seemed to be deeply blest for a while by these words. She gave a grateful smile to the old man, and sat silent, moving her lips. At length she again broke forth:—
“Oh! death, whatever may have been our thoughts or fears, ever comes unexpectedly at last. My son often—often told me, that he was dying, and I saw that it was so ever since Christmas. But how could I prevent hope from entering my heart? His sweet happy voice—the calmness of his prayers—his smiles that never left his face whenever he looked or spoke to me—his studies, still pursued as anxiously as ever—the interest he took in any little incident of our retired life—all forced me to believe at times that he was not destined to die. But why think on all these things now? Yes! I will always think of them, till I join him and my husband in heaven!”
It seemed now as if the widow had only noticed me for the first time. Her soul had been so engrossed with its passion of grief, and with the felt sympathy and compassion of my venerable friend. She asked me if I had known her son; and I answered, that if I had, I could not have sat there so composedly; but that I was no stranger to his incomparable excellence, and felt indeed for her grievous loss. She listened to my words, but did not seem to hear them, and once more addressed the old man.
“He suffered much sickness, my poor boy. For although it was a consumption, that is not always an easy death. But as soon as the sickness and the racking pain gave way to our united prayers, God and our Saviour made us happy; and sure he spake then as never mortal spake, kindling into a happiness that was beautiful to see, when I beheld his face marked by dissolution, and knew, even in those inspired moments (for I can call them nothing else), that ere
long the dust was to lie on those lips now flowing over with heavenly music!”
We sat for some hours in the widow’s hut, and the minister several times prayed with her, at her own request. On rising to depart, he said that he would send up one of her dearest friends to pass the night with her, and help her to do the last offices to her son. But she replied that she wished to be left alone for that day and night, and would expect her friend in the morning. We went towards the outer door, and she, in a sort of sudden stupor, let us depart without any farewell words, and retired into the room where her son was lying. Casting back our eyes before our departure, we saw her steal into the bed beside the dead body, and drawing the head gently into her bosom, she lay down with him in her arms, and as if they had in that manner fallen asleep.
THE CRUSHED BONNET.
Towards the close of a beautiful autumnal day in 18—, when pacing slowly on my way, and in a contemplative mood admiring the delightful scenery between Blair Athole and Dunkeld, on my return from a survey of the celebrated pass of Killiecrankie, and other places rendered famous in Scottish story, I was accosted by a female, little past the prime of life, but with two children of unequal age walking by her side, and a younger slung upon her back. The salutation was of the supplicatory kind, and while the tones were almost perfectly English, the pronunciation of the words was often highly Scottish. The words, a “sodger’s widow”—“three helpless bairns”—and “Waterloo,” broke my meditations with the force of an enchantment, excited my sympathy, and made me draw my purse. While in the act of tendering a piece of money—a cheap and easy mode of procuring the luxury of doing good—I thought the countenance, though browned and weather-beaten, one which I before had seen, without exactly recollecting when or where. My curiosity thus raised, many interrogatives and answers speedily followed, when at last I discovered that there stood before me Jeanie Strathavon, once the beauty and the pride of my own native village. Ten long and troublous years had passed away since Jeanie left the neighbourhood in which she was born to follow the spirit-stirring drum; and where she had gone, or how she had afterwards fared, many enquired, though but few could tell. The incident which led to all her subsequent toil and suffering seemed but trivial at the time, yet, like many other trivial occurrences, became to her one fraught with mighty consequences.
She was an only daughter, her father was an honest labourer, and though not nursed in the bosom of affluence, she hardly knew what it was to have a wish ungratified. She possessed mental vivacity, and
personal attractions, rarely exhibited, especially at the present day, by persons in her humble sphere of life. Though she never could boast what might properly be called education, yet great care had been taken to render her modest, affectionate, and pious. Her parents, now in the decline of life, looked upon her as their only solace. She had been from her very birth the idol of their hearts; and as there was no sunshine in their days but when she was healthy and happy, so their prospects were never clouded but when she was the reverse. Always the favourite of one sex, and the envy of another, when not yet out of her teens, she was importuned by the addresses of many both of her own rank and of a rank above her own, to change her mode of life. The attentions of the latter, in obedience to the suggestions of her affectionate but simple hearted parents, she always discouraged, for they never would allow themselves to think that “folk wi’ siller would be looking after their bairn for ony gude end.” Among those of her own station, she could hardly be said to have yet shown a decided preference to any one, though the glances which she cast at Henry Williams, when passing through the kirkyard on Sundays, seemed to every one to say where, if she had her own unbiassed will, her choice would light. Still she had never thought seriously upon the time when, nor the person for whom, she would leave her fond and doting parents. Chance or accident, however, in these matters, often outruns the speed of deliberate choice; at least such was the case with poor Jeanie.
Decked out one Sabbath morning in her best, to go to what Burns calls a “Holy Fair,” in the neighbouring parish, though viewed in a far different light by her, Jeanie had on her brawest and her best; and among other things, a fine new bonnet, which excited the gossip and the gaze of all the lasses in the village. Having sat for an hour or two at the tent, listening earnestly and devoutly to a discourse which formed a complete body of divinity, she, with many others, was at length obliged to take refuge in the church, to shun a heavy summer shower, which unexpectedly arrested the out-door devotions. Here, whether wearied with the long walk she had in the morning, or overpowered with the heat and suffocation consequent upon such a crowd, she began to feel a serious oppression of sickness, and before she could effect her escape she entirely fainted away, requiring to be carried out in a state of complete insensibility.
It was long before she came to herself; and when she did, she found that the rough hands of those who had caught her when falling, and borne her through the crowd to the open air, had, amidst the anxiety for her recovery, treated her finery with but very little ceremony. Among other instances of this kind, she found that her bonnet had been hastily torn from her head, thrown carelessly aside, and, being accidentally trod upon, had been so crushed, as to render it perfectly useless. The grief which this caused made her forget the occasion which produced such disaster; and adjusting herself as well as she could, she did not wait the conclusion of the solemn service, but sought her father’s cottage amidst much sorrow and confusion.
When she reached home, she found her parents engaged in devotional reading, their usual mode of spending the Sabbath evenings. As it was not altogether with their consent that she had not accompanied them that day to their usual place of being instructed in divine things, the plight in which she returned to them excited, especially on the mother’s part, a hasty burst of displeasure, if not of anger; and the calm improving peace of the evening was entirely broken. Sacred as to them the day appeared, they could not restrain inquiry as to the cause of her altered appearance, and maternal anxiety gave birth to suspicions which poor Jeanie’s known veracity and simple unaffected narrative could not altogether repress. Thus, for the first time in her life, had Jeanie excited the frown of her parents, and every reproving look and word was as a dagger to her heart.
Night came, and she retired to rest, but her innocent breast was too much agitated to allow her eyes to close in sleep; and the return of morning only brought with it an additional burden to her heart, by a renewed discussion of the events of the previous day. This was more than she was able to stand, and she took the first opportunity to escape from that roof where, till now, she had never known aught but delight, to go to pour her complaint into the ear of one who seemed to love her almost to distraction,—her youthful admirer, Henry Williams. Their interview, though not long, terminated in the proposal on his part to relieve her from her embarrassed situation by forthwith making her his own. Whether this was what she desired, in having recourse to such an adviser, cannot be known, but, at all events, she acceded with blamable facility to his wishes. She could
not endure the thought of being without a friend, and she knew not that the friendship and affection of her parents had suffered no abatement, though their great concern for her innocence and welfare had pushed their reproofs further than they intended, or than prudence under such circumstances would warrant.
Henry was little more than her own age, of but moderate capacity, handsome in person, and ill provided with the means of making matrimony a state of enjoyment; and too much addicted to the frivolities of his years to be fitted for the serious business of being the head of a family. Youth and inexperience seldom consider consequences, and the desire of the one to receive, and of the other to afford relief, under existing circumstances, made them resolve neither to ask parental consent to their purpose, nor wait the ordinary steps prescribed by the Church. The connection was therefore no less irregular than it was precipitate, and Jeanie never so much as sought to see her father’s house till the solemn knot was tied.
In her absence many inquiries were made respecting her by the villagers, who had witnessed or heard of what had happened to her on the previous day. Her truth and innocence being thus put beyond the shadow of a doubt, consternation at the long absence of their child, and compunction for the severity of their reproofs, drove the unhappy parents almost frantic. When the news of the re-appearance of their daughter dispelled their direful apprehensions as to her safety, though they felt a momentary gleam of joy, yet they experienced nothing like heartfelt satisfaction.
Jeanie made as sweet and loving a wife as she had been a daughter; but the cares of providing for more than himself soon made Henry regret his rashness, and the prospect of these cares speedily increasing made him more and more dissatisfied with his new state of life. All Jeanie’s care and anxiety to soothe and please him were unavailing. It is not in the power of beauty, youth, and innocence, to check and control the sallies of ignorance and caprice. Chagrined because his youthful wife had not prepared his morning meal to his liking, on a day when he was to visit a neighbouring city for some trifling purpose, he determined to free himself from the yoke into which he had so heedlessly run, and returned home on the evening of the following day somewhat altered in dress and
