The Heart of Mid-Lothian

'What do I want!' replied she, in a sulky tone—'I want my bairn, or I want naething frae nane o' ye, for as grand's ye are.' And she went on muttering to herself with the wayward spitefulness of age—'They maun hae lordships and honours, nae doubt—set them up, the gutter-bloods! and deil a gentleman amang them.'—Then again addressing the sitting magistrate, 'Will your honour gie me back my puir crazy bairn?—His honour!—I hae kend the day when less wad ser'd him, the oe of a Campvere skipper.'

'Good woman,' said the magistrate to this shrewish supplicant—'tell us what it is you want, and do not interrupt the court.'

'That's as muckle as till say, Bark, Bawtie, and be dune wi't!—I tell ye,' raising her termagant voice, 'I want my bairn! is na that braid Scots?'

'Who are you?—who is your bairn?' demanded the magistrate.

'Wha am I?—wha suld I be, but Meg Murdockson, and wha suld my bairn be but Magdalen Murdockson?— Your guard soldiers, and your constables, and your officers, ken us weel eneugh when they rive the bits o' duds aff our backs, and take what penny o' siller we hae, and harle us to the Correctionhouse in Leith Wynd, and pettle us up wi' bread and water and siclike sunkets.'

'Who is she?' said the magistrate, looking round to some of his people.

'Other than a gude ane, sir,' said one of the city officers, shrugging his shoulders and smiling.

'Will ye say sae?' said the termagant, her eye gleaming with impotent fury; 'an I had ye amang the Figgat-Whins,[26] wadna I set my ten talents in your wuzzent face for that very word?' and she suited the word to the action, by spreading out a set of claws resembling those of St. George's dragon on a country sign-post.

'What does she want here?' said the impatient magistrate—'Can she not tell her business, or go away?'

'It's my bairn!—it's Magdalen Murdockson I'm wantin',' answered the beldam, screaming at the highest pitch of her cracked and mistuned voice—'havena I been telling ye sae this half-hour? And if ye are deaf, what needs ye sit cockit up there, and keep folk scraughin' t'ye this gate?'

'She wants her daughter, sir,' said the same officer whose interference had given the hag such offence before—'her daughter, who was taken up last night—Madge Wildfire, as they ca' her.'

'Madge Hellfire, as they ca' her!' echoed the beldam 'and what business has a blackguard like you to ca' an honest woman's bairn out o' her ain name?'

'An honest woman's bairn, Maggie?' answered the peace-officer, smiling and shaking his head with an ironical emphasis on the adjective, and a calmness calculated to provoke to madness the furious old shrew.

'If I am no honest now, I was honest ance,' she replied; 'and that's mair than ye can say, ye born and bred thief, that never kend ither folks' gear frae your ain since the day ye was cleckit. Honest, say ye?—ye pykit your mother's pouch o' twalpennies Scots when ye were five years auld, just as she was taking leave o' your father at the fit o' the gallows.'

'She has you there, George,' said the assistants, and there was a general laugh; for the wit was fitted for the meridian of the place where it was uttered. This general applause somewhat gratified the passions of the old hag; the 'grim feature' smiled and even laughed—but it was a laugh of bitter scorn. She condescended, however, as if appeased by the success of her sally, to explain her business more distinctly, when the magistrate, commanding silence, again desired her either to speak out her errand, or to leave the place.

'Her bairn,' she said, 'was her bairn, and she came to fetch her out of ill haft and waur guiding. If she wasna sae wise as ither folk, few ither folk had suffered as muckle as she had done; forby that she could fend the waur for hersell within the four wa's of a jail. She could prove by fifty witnesses, and fifty to that, that her daughter had never seen Jock Porteous, alive or dead, since he had gien her a laundering wi' his cane, the neger that he was! for driving a dead cat at the provost's wig on the Elector of Hanover's birthday.'

Notwithstanding the wretched appearance and violent demeanour of this woman, the magistrate felt the justice of her argument, that her child might be as dear to her as to a more fortunate and more amiable mother. He proceeded to investigate the circumstances which had led to Madge Murdockson's (or Wildfire's) arrest, and as it was clearly shown that she had not been engaged in the riot, he contented himself with directing that an eye should be kept upon her by the police, but that for the present she should be allowed to return home with her mother. During the interval of fetching Madge from the jail, the magistrate endeavoured to discover whether her mother had been privy to the change of dress betwixt that young woman and Robertson. But on this point he could obtain no light. She persisted in declaring, that she had never seen Robertson since his remarkable escape during service-time; and that, if her daughter had changed clothes with him, it must have been during her absence at a hamlet about two miles out of town, called Duddingstone, where she could prove that she passed that eventful night. And, in fact, one of the town-officers, who had been searching for stolen linen at the cottage of a washer- woman in that village, gave his evidence, that he had seen Maggie Murdockson there, whose presence had considerably increased his suspicion of the house in which she was a visitor, in respect that he considered her as a person of no good reputation.

'I tauld ye sae,' said the hag; 'see now what it is to hae a character, gude or bad!—Now, maybe, after a', I could tell ye something about Porteous that you council-chamber bodies never could find out, for as muckle stir as ye mak.'

All eyes were turned towards her—all ears were alert. 'Speak out!' said the magistrate.

'It will be for your ain gude,' insinuated the town-clerk.

'Dinna keep the Bailie waiting,' urged the assistants.

She remained doggedly silent for two or three minutes, casting around a malignant and sulky glance, that seemed to enjoy the anxious suspense with which they waited her answer. And then she broke forth at once,—'A' that I ken about him is, that he was neither soldier nor gentleman, but just a thief and a blackguard, like maist o' yoursells, dears—What will ye gie me for that news, now?—He wad hae served the gude town lang or provost or bailie wad hae fund that out, my jo!'

While these matters were in discussion, Madge Wildfire entered, and her first exclamation was, 'Eh! see if there isna our auld ne'er-do-weel deevil's-buckie o' a mither—Hegh, sirs! but we are a hopeful family, to be twa o' us in the Guard at ance—But there were better days wi' us ance—were there na, mither?'

Old Maggie's eyes had glistened with something like an expression of pleasure when she saw her daughter set at liberty. But either her natural affection, like that of the tigress, could not be displayed without a strain of ferocity, or there was something in the ideas which Madge's speech awakened, that again stirred her cross and savage temper. 'What signifies what we, were, ye street-raking limmer!' she exclaimed, pushing her daughter before her to the door, with no gentle degree of violence. 'I'se tell thee what thou is now—thou's a crazed hellicat Bess o' Bedlam, that sall taste naething but bread and water for a fortnight, to serve ye for the plague ye hae gien me—and ower gude for ye, ye idle taupie!'

Madge, however, escaped from her mother at the door, ran back to the foot of the table, dropped a very low and fantastic courtesy to the judge, and said, with a giggling laugh,—'Our minnie's sair mis-set, after her ordinar, sir—She'll hae had some quarrel wi' her auld gudeman—that's Satan, ye ken, sirs.' This explanatory note she gave in a low confidential tone, and the spectators of that credulous generation did not hear it without an involuntary shudder. 'The gudeman and her disna aye gree weel, and then I maun pay the piper; but my back's broad eneugh to bear't a'—an' if she hae nae havings, that's nae reason why wiser folk shouldna hae some.' Here another deep courtesy, when the ungracious voice of her mother was heard.

'Madge, ye limmer! If I come to fetch ye!'

'Hear till her,' said Madge. 'But I'll wun out a gliff the night for a' that, to dance in the moonlight, when her and the gudeman will be whirrying through the blue lift on a broom-shank, to see Jean Jap, that they hae putten intill the Kirkcaldy Tolbooth—ay, they will hae a merry sail ower Inchkeith, and ower a' the bits o' bonny waves that are poppling and plashing against the rocks in the gowden glimmer o' the moon, ye ken.—I'm coming, mother— I'm coming,' she concluded, on hearing a scuffle at the door betwixt the beldam and the officers, who were endeavouring to prevent her re-entrance. Madge then waved her hand wildly towards the ceiling, and sung, at the topmost pitch of her voice,