Redgauntlet

Oho, thought I, if I have no sharper ears than those of my friends Jan and Dorcas to encounter, I may venture an experiment upon them; and, as most expressive of my state of captivity, I sang two or three lines of the 137th Psalm—

By Babel's streams we sat and wept.

The country people listened with attention, and when I ceased, I heard them whisper together in tones of commiseration, 'Lack-a-day, poor soul! so pretty a man to be beside his wits!'

'An he be that gate,' said Wandering Willie, in a tone calculated to reach my ears, 'I ken naething will raise his spirits like a spring.' And he struck up, with great vigour and spirit, the lively Scottish air, the words of which instantly occurred to me—

Oh whistle and I'll come t'ye, my lad, 
Oh whistle and I'll come t'ye, my lad; 
Though father and mother and a' should gae mad, 
Oh whistle and I'll come t'ye, my lad.

I soon heard a clattering noise of feet in the courtyard, which I concluded to be Jan and Dorcas dancing a jig in their Cumberland wooden clogs. Under cover of this din, I endeavoured to answer Willie's signal by whistling, as loud as I could—-

Come back again and loe me 
When a' the lave are gane. 
He instantly threw the dancers out, by changing his air to 
There's my thumb, I'll ne'er beguile thee.

I no longer doubted that a communication betwixt us was happily established, and that, if I had an opportunity of speaking to the poor musician, I should find him willing to take my letter to the post, to invoke the assistance of some active magistrate, or of the commanding-officer of Carlisle Castle, or, in short, to do whatever else I could point out, in the compass of his power, to contribute to my liberation. But to obtain speech of him, I must have run the risk of alarming the suspicions of Dorcas, if not of her yet more stupid Corydon. My ally's blindness prevented his receiving any communication by signs from the window—even if I could have ventured to make them, consistently with prudence—so that notwithstanding the mode of intercourse we had adopted was both circuitous and peculiarly liable to misapprehension, I saw nothing I could do better than to continue it, trusting my own and my correspondent's acuteness in applying to the airs the meaning they were intended to convey. I thought of singing the words themselves of some significant song, but feared I might, by doing so, attract suspicion. I endeavoured, therefore, to intimate my speedy departure from my present place of residence, by whistling the well-known air with which festive parties in Scotland usually conclude the dance:—

Good night and joy be wi' ye a', 
For here nae langer maun I stay; 
There's neither friend nor foe, of mine 
But wishes that I were away.

It appeared that Willie's powers of intelligence were much more active than mine, and that, like a deaf person accustomed to be spoken to by signs, he comprehended, from the very first notes, the whole meaning I intended to convey; and he accompanied me in the air with his violin, in such a manner as at once to show he understood my meaning, and to prevent my whistling from being attended to.

His reply was almost immediate, and was conveyed in the old martial air of 'Hey, Johnnie lad, cock up your beaver.' I ran over the words, and fixed on the following stanza, as most applicable to my circumstances:—

Cock up your beaver, and cock it fu' sprush; 
We'll over the Border and give them a brush; 
There's somebody there we'll teach better behaviour, 
Hey, Johnnie lad, cock up your beaver.

If these sounds alluded, as I hope they do, to the chance of assistance from my Scottish friends, I may indeed consider that a door is open to hope and freedom. I immediately replied with:—

My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here; 
My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer; 
A-chasing the wild deer, and following the roe, 
My heart's in the Highlands wherever I go. 

Farewell to the Highlands! farewell to the North! 
The birth-place of valour, the cradle of worth; 
Wherever I wander, wherever I rove, 
The hills of the Highlands for ever I love.

Willie instantly played, with a degree of spirit which might have awakened hope in Despair herself, if Despair could be supposed to understand Scotch music, the fine old Jacobite air,