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IT will readily be
conjectured that in leading such a life, and following such a calling,
Sandy must have had many privations to endure, and many adventures and
hair-breadth escapes “by flood and field,” but he had such an aversion
to recount his hardships, lest he should be thought to be soliciting
commiseration, and was so sensitive on the point of appearing to be
boastful, that it was very seldom he could be got to narrate either his
privations or adventures. One or two instances, merely as examples, must
therefore suffice in this sketch.
On one occasion, late in the season, he set out from the neighbourhood
of Ballater, provisioned only with the usual “whisky buckie,” to have a
day among the ptarmigan on Benavon. The first day's sport proving
unsuccessful, he passed the night in some crevice of the rocks, and next
morning found him shooting over the broad brow of Benabourd. Wandering
still further into the wilds, he on the following day made the circuit
of Ben Muicdhui’s towering summit, having nothing to live on all this
while but the pound or two of meal and whisky, which, not deeming it
would be required to support him for such a length of time, had not been
reserved for future exigencies.
Retracing his steps, he was on the afternoon of the third day overtaken
on Benavon by one of those bitter storms of wind and snow which
sometimes suddenly sweep over these inhospitable regions, like a
Siberian poorga, threatening destruction to any living thing that may
happen to be within its range. He was near no place of shelter, and the
biting wind sent its fang to the bone. Still he continued to make his
way through it; but his poor dog Charlie, cowering and shivering at his
heels, was sinking fast before the breath of the storm. His master did
everything he could to cheer him up, patted him, ran with him in the
face of the blast to keep the blood from freezing in his veins, but all
to no purpose; poor Charlie caught no heat, but set up his pitiful whine
amid the hiss of the vengeful storm. Sandy had been accustomed to bear
many things with indifference, but the call for pity, whether from man
or beast, went straight to his heart. Stripping himself of his thin
tartan coat he rolled poor Charlie up in its folds, leaving himself
exposed to the storm, and in this state he awaited its termination.
The incident would probably never have become known, for Sandy was as
averse to dilate on his acts of mercy as he was to rehearse his
sufferings, had not a man in search of some stray sheep happened to come
upon him and his dog in the plight described. When the matter was
referred to in his hearing, he would attempt to turn it off with the
slight remark, “Poor beast! I was sorry for him.” Though he made no
scruple of denuding himself of his coat in the midst of a snow storm to
alleviate the sufferings of his poor dog, it shows how shy he was of
making known his own sufferings, when he did not ask the man who had
been cast in his way for a morsel of food, though he must have been
famishing, having had nothing to eat for the greater part of two days,
and knowing that many hours must elapse before he could reach a human
habitation. On this occasion Charlie had fared much better than his
master; for he had not been allowed to feel the pangs of hunger while a
bird was in the bag, in which there was probably enough for both, had
the human sufferer had the means of cooking the game so as to make it
fit and lawful food.
“I don’t think,” said Sandy, when he got to the house where his wants
were supplied, and as an apology for the heartiness of the meal he was
able to indulge in, “I don’t think I was ever so hungry in my life. It
was provoking to have the birds on my back and yet be starving of
hunger; but I do believe another half day would have made me eat the
grouse raw.”
The incident just mentioned shows how great his affection for his dogs
was. Indeed it got, in the case of Charlie, to assume a type beyond what
is current between man and his pets of the lower creation. An old maid’s
attachment to her cat is passionate and jealous enough; but it was a
different kind of bond that knit Sandy to his dogs—a bond somewhat akin
to what fellowship in suffering generates between human beings. “When
Charlie died, I shed tears over him; we had gone so much together,” is
perhaps the most pathetic expression Sandy was ever known to utter.
Though Charlie reciprocated to the full his master’s affection for him,
and though he would probably at any time have risked his life to save
him had he been in danger, yet his power of enduring hunger and cold was
not equal to his whose lot he shared. The following anecdote of Charlie
has been told the writer by one who knew man and dog very well—
“I remember poor Charlie very well,—a rather little, white and brown
dog. He was up to all his ways, and had a sort of human fondness for
him. Yet for all this, I have known him under the pressure of sheer
hunger desert him among the mountains. I recollect once when Sandy had
been some days in the forest, Charlie made his appearance alone at my
house. I was very much astonished, knowing how fond the dog was of him,
and feared that something must have befallen his master, perhaps he
might be lying dead among the hills. We got the dog into an outhouse and
shut him in, giving him something to eat. But he had no sooner got his
belly filled, than out he would be, scraping at the door and howling. I
believe he would have gone mad if we had not let him out As soon as the
door was opened, off he went like shot, and though we tried to coax him
and called to him, it was of no use; away he went, and we saw no more of
him till a day or so after Sandy and he both appeared together, and I
then learned that Charlie had come twelve miles for his victuals the day
he paid us the visit alone.”
“I never but once,” Sandy used to say, “got fairly bewildered among the
hills. It was late in the year, and I had been shooting in Glenrinnes.
It had been dull all day, and towards evening snow began to fall. I
think I never saw the snow flakes so big or falling so fast In less than
two hours there was not the vestige of a black thing over the whole face
of the earth. I knew the ground as well as you know the floor of your
own house, and yet I could make nothing of it I kept going on, going on,
thinking I should certainly meet with some object that I could recognise.
But no; and at last the snow got so deep that I scarcely knew if I was
going up or down the hill. I thought of several plans to guide me, but
they all failed. At last I came to a stream, and I resolved to follow it
downwards, being sure it would bring me to some house; but so stupid was
I in the head that I could not make out which way the stream ran, and
when I put in some snow to see, it seemed to me to float up the stream.
But I reasoned that I might be bewildered, but the laws of nature were
not likely to be wrong; and so I followed the way the snow took, and at
last with much ado I got to a house I knew.”
These were some of his field experiences; as an example of his flood
experiences may be mentioned an adventure he once had in the Loch of
Skene.
In his many wanderings he had come to this place for the purpose of
shooting water-fowl, at a time when the loch was almost wholly frozen
over with what appeared to him a strong sheet of ice. He had shot at and
wounded a teal drake, which fell on the ice near the middle of the lake.
Unfortunately on this occasion he was not accompanied by Charlie or any
other dog, and was under the necessity of either relinquishing his
prize, or venturing on the ice for it Any bird he might have shot would
have tempted him to incur some risk for its recovery, but for a teal
drake he would have run almost any danger. He all his life attached a
laughable importance to the feathers of this bird, as dressing for
salmon hooks. It was a remark he often made, “The hook without teal is
no better than one made up of crows feathers.” His desire to possess the
feathers of this teal nearly proved fatal to him.
He had not made his way far on the ice when be became aware that it was
not so strong as it appeared to be. He therefore proceeded with great
caution, testing its strength at almost every step he took. When just in
the act of picking up the coveted teal, the .ice gave way; a large ledge
had snapped off, and on this ledge he found himself floating away into
the open water in the centre of the lake. Strangely enough the fragile
raft remained unbroken till it came into collision with the fixed ice,
when it went into fragments, precipitating Sandy into the water. At this
critical moment he concentrated all the energies of his mind, and at
once adopted the most likely way of escaping with sweet life. Firmly
grasping his gun in both hands, he struck off with it fragment after
fragment of the ice, taking care not to disengage but small pieces at a
time lest he should be cut off horn reaching the rest In this way he
made a lane of clear water for himself a distance of a quarter of a
mile; and at last reaching ice of sufficient strength to sustain his
weight, he hitched himself on to it, and gained the land, “very nearly
gone,’ as he expressed it, and with his hands frightfully lacerated by
the method he had adopted to break through the ice.
Sandy was a hero worshipper of the true Carlylean brand. He was disposed
to pay due honour to the titled great; but unless the dignity they bore
from men was sustained by a corresponding patent of nobility from
nature, they were fit only to be made “laughing stocks of,” and to be
treated as counterfeit coin. When, however, he found both patents in
conjunction his admiration and respect scarcely knew any bounds. It has
been already stated that though everywhere known to be an inveterate and
incurable poacher, he was on visiting terms with most of the gentry in
the north; and seldom was there a ball or occasion of rejoicing in the
wide district over which his calling extended to which he was not
invited. He had by nature the feelings of a gentleman, and this almost
constant intercourse with the first society in the country had given his
manners and conversation a polish and fascination far above those of the
lower or even middle classes. However incongruous it may appear that the
professional violator of the law of the land should be on familiar terms
of acquaintance with clergymen and peers of the re-alm, yet to Sandy the
manse and the mansion were equally open.
In proportion to the warmth of his admiration for those who worthily
bore their honour, so was the intensity of his dislike and contempt for
those whom he deemed to have dishonoured their dignities. Extremely
sensitive on all points of honour and character, he never either forgot
or forgave any slight cast upon his own.
It happened once in a district where Sandy was very well known by every
one, that the tenants of a certain large proprietor had resolved to
entertain their landlord at a dinner and ball on the occasion of some
family rejoicing. Sandy, happening to be in the neighbourhood at the
time, and there being no special cause of quarrel between him and the
guest of the evening, presented himself, on invitation by some of his
friends among the tenants, to take part in the rejoicing, and add his
tribute to the general esteem entertained for the proprietor. But such
was not the view of the matter taken by the laird, who, too hastily
fancying himself insulted by the presence of such a notorious poacher
among his entertainers, demanded that Sandy should leave the company;
otherwise he could not stay. Stung to the quick by this insult, Sandy
immediately left, and repairing to a neighbouring hotel, engaged rooms
and set up an opposition ball, which, as asserted at the time, not only
damaged but eclipsed the entertainment to the laird.
Such was his method of taking revenge, and to the end of his days he
never got over the slight thus cast upon him. When reference was made to
it in his hearing, he would assume a posture of dignity, and in a tone
of contempt, exclaim, “Churlish fellow! there is not a spark of the
gentleman in him. No gentleman would ever do the like* But what would
you expect of a dirty Whig?”
Of the many gentlemen’s residences to which he received invitations,
Gordon Castle held by far the first place in his esteem. The late Duke
of Richmond was his beau-ideal of what a peer of the re-aim ought to be.
“He is generous, noble-minded, and no oppressor of the poor,” were the
terms in which Sandy usually described him. But in speaking of his son,
then Earl of March, and now leader of her Majesty’s Opposition in the
House of Lords, these, or indeed any words, were wholly insufficient to
express his admiration.
“I tell you,” he would say, and his eyes spoke more of his feelings than
his words, “that is a young nobleman that his country will one day be
proud of; mind, I tell you! ”
The author received the following account of Sandy’s first interview
with the Duke of Gordon from John MacLaren, gamekeeper to Mr. Coltman at
Deskrie, who had it from Marshall, the famous violinist and prot£g6 of
his Grace. The Duke and a friend happened to be shooting on the
Glenfiddoch moors, when he observed a puff of smoke on the hillside
opposite and, by the aid of a glass, a man with a game bag slung over
his shoulder, accompanied by a dog, also engaged in grouse shooting.
Calling his head keeper he said, "Robert, I thought we were to have the
whole of these moors to this party to-day. Who can that be shooting over
there?” “I do not know, your Grace, but I shall send to enquire.” “No,”
said the Duke, “go yourself, it may be some mistake that you have
committed in making your arrangements.” Robert immediately set off, and
was seen by Sandy more than a mile away, who however, instead of making
off, sat down and awaited his arrival The keeper knew Sandy and
explained to him the circumstances, upbraiding him with his want of
courtesy. “Well, Robert,” said the culprit, “it was not that, but a pure
mistake on my part Tell his Grace that I am the last man in the world
that would interfere with his sport, and that I am very sorry for what
has happened and will leave immediately/’ This being reported to the
Duke, who had been told something of Sandy’s character, a message was
dispatched to intimate that he might take the other side of the hill for
the afternoon and come to the Lodge in the evening. Sandy did so,
bringing with him a well-filled bag, which he desired Robert to present
to the Duke with his thanks for his kindness and an assurance that he
would not again disturb either him or any party of his in the pursuit of
their sport It is recorded that he spent a very merry night at
Glenfiddoch and received his first invitation to a dance at Gordon
Castle.
He was invariably invited to the balls there when he happened to be
accessible, and received particular attention from the Earl of March,
who always took him aside as he was leaving, and gave him a hint not to
want a day’s sport when he was inclined. It it needless to say that his
kindness was never abused. At these balls he often overheated himself in
the dance, deeming, as he did, his displays in that line an expression
of the high honour in which he held his entertainer. “The Earl of
March,” he would say, “made me dance with all the large company of
ladies staying at Gordon Castle”; and proud he was of the honour. In his
latter years, when his iron constitution was giving way, oxidized as it
had been by the exposure and privations he had endured, he was less able
to encounter these violent exertions with impunity, and sometimes was
brought to admit that in dancing a long round of reels “he was not the
man he had been.”
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